Louis D. Brandeis Quotes

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.

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retributions.

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

The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

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.

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

The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.

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

I rise early because no day is long enough for a day's work.

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

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 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.

... 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.

Behind every argument is somebody's ignorance. Rediscover the foundation of truth and the purpose and causes of dispute immediately disappear.

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 of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly.

Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.

We shall have lost something vital and beyond price on the day when the state denies us the right to resort to force.

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.