Louis D. Brandeis Quotes

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.

The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.

There is no great writing, only great rewriting.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

There are better mothers than disaster. A native land is the best of all mothers. We American Jews have a native land we love. But it is even better to have a native land who loves us.

What I have desired to do is to make the people of Boston realize that the most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.

At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

The Jews are a Distinct Nationality regardless of where they live, their station in life or their shades of belief, and his clarion call to all the Jews in the world to 'organize, organize, organize,' until every Jew in America must stand up and be counted - counted with us - or prove himself, wittingly or unwittingly, of the few who are against their own people.

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

In differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress.

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is an opportunity for full discussion. Only an emergency can justify repression.

The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.

Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.

The function of the press is very high. It is almost holy. It ought to serve as a forum for the people, through which the people may know freely what is going on. To misstate or suppress the news is a breach of trust.

Anyone who critically analyzes a business learns this: that the success or failure of an enterprise depends usually upon one man.

If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.

The constitutional right of free speech has been declared to be the same in peace and war. In peace, too, men may differ widely as to what loyalty to our country demands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by passion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees.

I think all of our human Experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part

I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.

... fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.

We learned long ago that liberty could be preserved only by limiting in some way the freedom of action of individuals; that otherwise liberty would necessarily yield to absolutism; and in the same way we have learned that unless there be regulation of competition, its excesses will lead to the destruction of competition, and monopoly will take its place.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

History is not life, but since only life makes history, the union of the two is obvious.

Repression breeds hate; hate menaces stable government.

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards.

Organisation can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgement.