Louis Dembitz Brandeis

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

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

The most important political office is that of the private citizen

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

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

The right to be alone, the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized man

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

The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities

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

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty

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.

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

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

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

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself

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

There are no shortcuts in evolution

Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence

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