Quotes by Jurists

Prayer should be short without giving God Almighty reasons why He should grant this or that He knows best what is good for us.
John Selden
If international law is, in some ways, at the vanishing point of law, the law of war is, perhaps even more conspicuously, at the vanishing point of international law.
Hersch Lauterpacht
Humans are mortal. So are ideas. An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering. Otherwise both will wither and die.
B.R. Ambedkar
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socia
Earl Warren
The question will arise and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine: Which shall rule — wealth or man? Which shall lead — money or intellect? Who shall fill public stations — educated and patriotic freemen or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?
Edward G. Ryan
I do not want that our loyalty as Indians should be in the slightest way affected by any competitive loyalty whether that loyalty arises out of our religion, out of our culture or out of our language. I want all people to be Indians first, Indian last and nothing else but Indians.
B.R. Ambedkar
The first requirement of a sound body of law is, that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community, whether right or wrong.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Judges are apt to be naive simple-minded men.
O. W. Holmes II
Never tell your resolution beforehand.
John Selden
I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk.
William Howard Taft
My definition of democracy is - A form and a method of Government whereby revolutionary changes in the social life are brought about without bloodshed. That is the real test. It is perhaps the severest test. But when you are judging the quality of the material you must put it to the severest test.
B.R. Ambedkar
We are very quiet there, but it is the quiet of a storm centre. .
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
They (corporations) cannot commit treason nor be outlawed nor excommunicated for they have no souls.
Sir Edward Coke
On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value.In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value.How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.
B.R. Ambedkar
We have shared the incommunicable experience of war, we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youth our hearts were touched with fire.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.
Felix Frankfurter
I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.
Muhammad Abduh
Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
Robert H. Jackson
We should always be aware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future.
Frederic W. Maitland
You must abolish your slavery yourselves. Do not depend for its abolition upon god or a superman. Remember that it is not enough that a people are numerically in the majority. They must be always watchful, strong and self-respecting to attain and maintain success.We must shape our course ourselves and by ourselves.
B.R. Ambedkar
We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.
William Howard Taft
We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Reason is the life of the law nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason. The law which is perfection of reason.
Sir Edward Coke
To some lawyers all facts are created equal.
Felix Frankfurter
We are now at the point where we must decide whether we are to honour the concept of a plural society which gains strength through diversity or whether we are to have bitter fragmentation that will result in perpetual tension and strife.
Earl Warren
Every man must have a philosophy of life, for everyone must have a standard by which to measure his conduct. And philosophy is nothing but a standard by which to measure.
B.R. Ambedkar
We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
Benjamin Cardozo
It is when the colors do not match, when the references in the index fail, when there is no decisive precedent, that the serious business of the judge begins
Benjamin Cardozo
The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till out political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich, - a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.
Stephen Johnson Field
Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.
B.R. Ambedkar
The sports page records people's accomplishments the front page usually records nothing but man's failures.
Earl Warren
The greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Cesare Beccaria
Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self too.
B.R. Ambedkar
What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.
B.R. Ambedkar
Wisdom too often never comes, so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
Felix Frankfurter
A state is a perfect body of free men united together to enjoy common rights and advantages.
Hugo Grotius
There is an accuracy that defeats itself by the overemphasis of details. I often say that one must permit oneself and quite advisedly and deliberately a certain margin of misstatement.
Benjamin N. Cardozo
Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead. Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.
B.R. Ambedkar
Sufism (tasawwuf) is not wearing clothes that you patched; it is not weeping when the singers sing their songs; and it is not dancing, shouting, experiencing ecstatic states, or passing out as if you’ve gone mad. Rather, Sufism is to become whole without any impurities; to follow the truth, the Qur’an, and this religion; and to be seen in a state of awe, broken and remorseful about all of your sins.
Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi
A child's education should begin at least 100 years before he was born.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith the
Robert H. Jackson
The civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender...The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband...The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfil the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. 1872
Joseph P. Bradley
I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.
Felix Frankfurter
Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.
B.R. Ambedkar
I'm very pleased with each advancing year. It stems back to when I was forty. I was a bit upset about reaching that milestone but an older friend consoled me. 'Don't complain about growing old - many people don't have that privilege.'
Earl Warren
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
I may be permitted, kind reader, to doubt whether you have ever been enclosed in a glass bottle, unless some vivid dream has teased you with such magical mishaps.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
A safe army is better than a safe border
B.R. Ambedkar
Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle.... Goats are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.
B.R. Ambedkar
Security can only be achieved through constant change through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
William O. Douglas
If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile and full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts.
B.R. Ambedkar
Share the passion and action of your time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught Hell for.
Earl Warren
A National Government cannot create good times. It cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, or the crops to grow, but it can, by pursuing a meddlesome policy, attempting to change economic conditions, and frightening the investment of capital, prevent a prosperity and a revival of business which might otherwise have taken place.
William Howard Taft
Why does a human body become deceased?The reason is that as long as the human body is not free from suffering, mind cannot be happy. If a man lacks enthusiasm, either his body or mind is in a deceased condition.... Now what saps the enthusiasm in man? If there is no enthusiasm, life becomes drudgery - a mere burden to be dragged. Nothing can be achieved if there is no enthusiasm. The main reason for this lack of enthusiasm on the part of a man is that an individual looses the hope of getting an opportunity to elevate himself. Hopelessness leads to lack of enthusiasm. The mind in such cases becomes deceased.... When is enthusiasm created? When one breaths an atmosphere where one is sure of getting the legitimate reward for one's labor, only then one feels enriched by enthusiasm and inspiration.
B.R. Ambedkar
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
William O. Douglas
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in cases involving not very nice people.
Felix Frankfurter
We are under a Constitution but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.
Charles Evans Hughes
One cannot have any respect or regard for men who take the position of the reformer and then refuse to see the logical consequences of that position, let alone following them out in action.
B.R. Ambedkar