List of Felix Frankfurter Quotes

What Becomes Decisive To A Justice's Functioning On The Court In The Large Area Within Which His Individuality Moves Is His General Attitude Toward Law, The Habits Of The Mind That He Has Formed Or Is Capable Of Unforming, His Capacity For Detachment, His Temperament Or Training For Putting His Passion Behind His Judgment Instead Of In Front Of It. The Attitudes And Qualities Which I Am Groping To Characterize Are Ingredients Of What Compendiously Might Be Called Dominating Humility.

In Law Also The Emphasis Makes The Song.

Anybody Can Decide A Question If Only A Single Principle Is In Controversy.

After All, Advocates, Including Advocates For States, Are Like Managers Of Pugilistic And Election Contestants In That They Have A Propensity For Claiming Everything.

If One Starts With The Assumption That, In The Absence Of Specific Congressional Authority, A Fixed Rule Of Law Precludes Contracting Officers From Providing In A Government Contract Terms Reasonably Calculated To Assure Its Performance Even Though There Be No Money Loss Through A Particular Default, There Is No Problem. But Answers Are Not Obtained By Putting The Wrong Question, And Thereby Begging The Real One.

Thirty Resolute Men In Your House Of Commons Could Save The World.

Litigation Is The Pursuit Of Practical Ends, Not A Game Of Chess.

I Came Into The World A Jew, And Although I Did Not Live My Life Entirely As A Jew, I Think It Is Fitting That I Should Leave As A Jew. I Don't Want To ... Turn My Back On A Great And Noble Heritage.

Of Compelling Consideration Is The Fact That Words Acquire Scope And Function From The History Of Events Which They Summarize.

There Is No Inevitability In History Except As Men Make It.

Convictions Following The Admission Into Evidence Of Confessions Which Are Involuntary, I.e., The Product Of Coercion, Either Physical Or Psychological, Cannot Stand. This Is So Not Because Such Confessions Are Unlikely To Be True But Because The Methods Used To Extract Them Offend An Underlying Principle In The Enforcement Of Our Criminal Law: That Ours Is An Accusatorial, And Not An Inquisitorial, System - A System In Which The State Must Establish Guilt By Evidence Independently And Freely Secured, And May Not, By Coercion, Prove Its Charges Against An Accused Out Of His Own Mouth.

Future Lawyers Should Be More Aware That Law Is Not A System Of Abstract Logic, But The Web Of Arrangements, Rooted In History But Also In Hopes, For Promoting To A Maximum The Full Use Of A Nation's Resources And Talents.