Louis D. Brandeis Quotes

Sunshine is the best disinfectant

The best of wages will not compensate for excessively long working hours which undermine heath.

In a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen

Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided.

The goose that lays golden eggs has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege.

America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.

The most important thing we do is not doing.

The tax-exempt privilege is a feature always reflected in the market price of [municipal] bonds. The investor pays for it.

The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.

If you would venture, let your mind be bold . . . not reckless but bold.

There are no shortcuts in evolution.

Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

We gain nothing by trading the tyranny of capital for the tyranny of labor.

No system of regulation can safely be substituted for the operation of individual liberty as expressed in competition.

Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.

Democracy is moral before it is political.

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.

The US States are our laboratories of democracy.

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

We shall have lost something vital and beyond price on the day when the state denies us the right to resort to force.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

No one can really pull you up very high - you lose your grip on the rope. But on your own two feet you can climb mountains.

Behind every argument is somebody's ignorance. Rediscover the foundation of truth and the purpose and causes of dispute immediately disappear.

There is no good writing; there is only good rewriting.

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.

Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power.

The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities.

If we would guide by the light of reason we must let our minds be bold.

The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. 'That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer' was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these.

The old idea of a good bargain was a transaction in which one man got the better of another. The new idea of a good contract is a transaction which is good for both parties to it.

People fear witches, and burn women.

Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world, it will all be much simpler.

To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.

The greatest factors making for communism, socialism or anarchy among a free people are the excesses of capital. The talk of the agitator does not advance socialism one step. The great captains of industry and finance... are the chief makers of socialism.

Men feared witches and burned women.

Sunshine is the greatest disinfectant

I rise early because no day is long enough for a day's work.

Men long for an afterlife in which there apparently is nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.

In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.

There is a spark of idealism within every individual which can be fanned into flame and bring forth extraordinary results.

I used to oppose women's suffrage and I've come to support it because these women have convinced me that we need full gender equality for full democratic participation.