Louis D. Brandeis Quotes & Sayings

#1. Crime is contagious ... if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

#2. The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions -- knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas -- become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use."
~Louis D. Brandeis

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#4. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#6. Men feared witches and burned women.

Louis D. Brandeis

#7. 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

#8. The most important office ... that of private citizen.

Louis D. Brandeis

#9. Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent.

Louis D. Brandeis

#10. Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.

Louis D. Brandeis

#11. Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.

Louis D. Brandeis

#12. 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.

Louis D. Brandeis

#13. The goose that lays golden eggs has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege.

Louis D. Brandeis

#14. The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.

Louis D. Brandeis

#15. 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.

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#17. 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.

Louis D. Brandeis

#18. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#20. 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

#21. Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization.

Louis D. Brandeis

#22. 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

#23. There is no good writing; there is only good rewriting.

Louis D. Brandeis

#24. The makers of our Constitution ... conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

Louis D. Brandeis

#25. In a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen

Louis D. Brandeis

#26. Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.

Louis D. Brandeis

#27. Organisation can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgement.

Louis D. Brandeis

#28. Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

Louis D. Brandeis

#29. 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.

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#32. No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is an opportunity for full discussion. Only an emergency can justify repression.

Louis D. Brandeis

#33. In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#35. Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.

Louis D. Brandeis

#36. In differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress.

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#38. Sunshine is the greatest disinfectant

Louis D. Brandeis

#39. Ways may someday be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home.

Louis D. Brandeis

#40. There are no shortcuts in evolution.

Louis D. Brandeis

#41. What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty; and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.

Louis D. Brandeis

#42. To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.

Louis D. Brandeis

#43. There is no such thing as an innocent purchaser of stocks.

Louis D. Brandeis

#44. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Louis D. Brandeis

#45. The difference between a nation and a nationality is clear, but it is not always observed. Likeness between members is the essence of nationality, but the members of a nation may be very different. A nation may be composed of many nationalities, as some of the most successful nations are.

Louis D. Brandeis

#46. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

Louis D. Brandeis

#47. 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.
[Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927)]

Louis D. Brandeis

#48. A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state and of his city; for being loyal to his family and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge.

Louis D. Brandeis

#49. Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties.

Louis D. Brandeis

#50. The best of wages will not compensate for excessively long working hours which undermine heath.

Louis D. Brandeis

#51. 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.

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#54. If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world, it will all be much simpler.

Louis D. Brandeis

#55. History is not life, but since only life makes history, the union of the two is obvious.

Louis D. Brandeis

#56. The US States are our laboratories of democracy.

Louis D. Brandeis

#57. The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities.

Louis D. Brandeis

#58. If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.

Louis D. Brandeis

#59. The most important political office is that of private citizen.

Louis D. Brandeis

#60. If you would venture, let your mind be bold ... not reckless but bold.

Louis D. Brandeis

#61. The most important thing we do is not doing.

Louis D. Brandeis

#62. The tax-exempt privilege is a feature always reflected in the market price of [municipal] bonds. The investor pays for it.

Louis D. Brandeis

#63. The old idea of a good bargain was a transaction in which one man got the better of another. The new idea of a good contract is a transaction which is good for both parties to it.

Louis D. Brandeis

#64. Repression breeds hate; hate menaces stable government.

Louis D. Brandeis

#65. There are better mothers than disaster. A native land is the best of all mothers. We American Jews have a native land we love. But it is even better to have a native land who loves us.

Louis D. Brandeis

#66. Anyone who critically analyzes a business learns this: that the success or failure of an enterprise depends usually upon one man.

Louis D. Brandeis

#67. It is one of the greatest economic errors to put any limitation upon production.We have not the power to produce more than there is a potential to consume.

Louis D. Brandeis

#68. The greatest factors making for communism, socialism or anarchy among a free people are the excesses of capital. The talk of the agitator does not advance socialism one step. The great captains of industry and finance ... are the chief makers of socialism.

Louis D. Brandeis

#69. 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

#70. Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power.

Louis D. Brandeis

#71. I think all of our human Experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part

Louis D. Brandeis

#72. Sunshine is the best disinfectant

Louis D. Brandeis

#73. 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.

Louis D. Brandeis

#74. 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

#75. No system of regulation can safely be substituted for the operation of individual liberty as expressed in competition.

Louis D. Brandeis

#76. We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

Louis D. Brandeis

#77. There is no great writing, only great rewriting.

Louis D. Brandeis

#78. It is not wealth, it is not station, it is not social standing and ambition which can make us worthy of the Jewish name, of the Jewish heritage. To be worthy of them, we must live up to and with them. We must regard ourselves their custodians.

Louis D. Brandeis