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.
– Louis D. Brandeis
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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.
– Louis D. Brandeis
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
– Louis D. Brandeis
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
– Louis D. Brandeis
Organization can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgment.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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.
– Louis D. Brandeis
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
– Louis D. Brandeis
The most important political office is that of the private citizen.
– Louis D. Brandeis
There are no shortcuts in evolution.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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.
– Louis D. Brandeis
We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.
– Louis D. Brandeis
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.
– Louis D. Brandeis
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
– Louis D. Brandeis
Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.
– Louis D. Brandeis
In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.