Top 100 Brandeis Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Brandeis

#1. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. - Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States (1928)

Jane Mayer

#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. I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.'

Timothy McVeigh

#4. I think the answer has to do with the fact that [Louis D.] Brandeis was a consistent critic of bigness in business and in government.

Jeffrey Rosen

#5. He [Louis Brandeis] would have not had any patience with that great debate which you're right to kind of signal between Justice Scalia and Justice Alito about do you need a physical trespass into the home or onto the carriage in order to trigger the values of the Fourth Amendment.

Jeffrey Rosen

#6. The greatest dangers to liberty," said Mr. Brandeis, "lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

E.B. White

#7. Why I find Louis Brandeis so exciting and inspiring because he's teaching us - good legal writing is not a matter of taste, it's a matter of connection with fellow citizens and of democratic education.

Jeffrey Rosen

#8. But as I wrote the book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet], I tried to write it as clearly and directly and passionately as possible just thinking of communicating to readers who might want to learn about this great thinker and be inspired by him as I was.

Jeffrey Rosen

#9. I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy!

Caroline Leavitt

#10. I think [Louis] Brandeis challenges all of the current justices. As he said, "If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold." You have to take the values that the framers were concerned about and translate them into this new age.

Jeffrey Rosen

#11. S. J. Keyser is a shrewd and insightful observer of academe. His experiences in three universities, Brandeis, UMass, and MIT, enrich his perspectives about the way universities work, and his exploration of the culture of MIT is brilliant.

Paul E. Gray

#12. Brandeis thought that the British should allow more Jews into Palestine. It was not only their obligation under the Balfour Declaration; it was the only way Jews could be saved from Hitler. When

Lewis J. Paper

#13. True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience of such men as Brandeis.
~ Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

#14. I came to believe that actually [Louis] Brandeis tended to uphold laws that he liked and strike down those that he didn't, generally strike down centralizing federal agencies in the New Deal, and uphold state economic experimentation.

Jeffrey Rosen

#15. [Louis Brandeis] insisted on the necessity of public reason, which he thought could only be achieved if all of us just take the time to inform ourselves about the best arguments on all sides of questions so that we can make up our own minds.

Jeffrey Rosen

#16. It's unfortunate that [Louis] Brandeis was not able to translate or abstract his devotion to cultural pluralism and racial equality as he put it for Jews to enslave people and their descendants and to African Americans.

Jeffrey Rosen

#17. I'm hardly the first person to say that you've [Jeffrey Rosen] written a book about a person who has more to say about the current state of being than almost anyone, Louis Brandeis, and yet nobody is talking about Louis Brandeis.

Dahlia Lithwick

#18. I was very much influenced by a great book by the scholar Neil Richards called Intellectual Privacy, that [Louis] Brandeis changed his mind on the proper balance between dignity and free speech.

Jeffrey Rosen

#19. Louis Brandeis never had the opportunity - or he never sought the opportunity I should say - to work closely with African American lawyers. He was also a Southern Democrat, you know, at a time when both parties were supportive of segregation.

Jeffrey Rosen

#20. [Louis Brandeis] at the age of 57 decided to become the head of the American Zionist movement was more influential than anyone else in the 20th century in persuading Woodrow Wilson to recognize a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Jeffrey Rosen

#21. Louis Brandeis was not a racist like Woodrow Wilson.

Jeffrey Rosen

#22. We shouldn't let the Republicans off the hook. Theodore Roosevelt, we learned from Jeff Cowan's new book, was just as bad as certainly [Louis] Brandeis was, or many Democrats were on the question of segregation.

Jeffrey Rosen

#23. [Louis] Brandeis improves the prose. He simplifies it and perfects the balance of the sentence so it becomes even more memorable and aphoristic.

Jeffrey Rosen

#24. What is so inspiring about [Louis] Brandeis's writing is he saw it as a tool for democratic education. He would say things like the opinion is now convincing, now can we make it more instructive, after he'd gone through ten drafts.

Jeffrey Rosen

#25. [Louis] Brandeis, like [Tomas] Jefferson, is an equal opportunity critic of bigness. And he, like Jefferson, sees American history as this incredible clash between small producers, farmers, and small business people on the one hand, and wicked oligarchs and financiers and monopolists on the other.

Jeffrey Rosen

#26. Initially the papers said that the fact that Louis Brandeis was picked because he was Jewish. The New York Sun said he's the first Jew ever picked for the bench - a long and bitter fight expected in the Senate over confirmation.

Jeffrey Rosen

#27. After I graduated from Brandeis, I took all the money I had in the world, which was $5,000, and I made a short film. I made every mistake you could possibly make. It was a total disaster as a piece of work, and yet, you know, it was ambitious in some way.

Marshall Herskovitz

#28. As the familiar quote usually attributed to Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis goes, 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.

Jaron Lanier

#29. Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical.

Jeffrey Rosen

#30. [Louis] Brandeis had a very distinctive vision of political economy that he persuaded Woodrow Wilson to adopt in the 1912 election and that he largely enacted from the bench.

Jeffrey Rosen

#31. [Louis] Brandeis is writing directly to us. His clear voice comes through a century and he's speaking to us and he's galvanizing us and he's persuading us. And that's why I love to read the prose.

Jeffrey Rosen

#32. Justice Jefferson has a blind spot on race. You know, more than a blind spot. A terrible blemish on his legacy, slavery, for which he's properly excoriated. So, I think [Louis] Brandeis has done this as well.

Jeffrey Rosen

#33. [Louis] Brandeis is often painted as an acolyte of judicial restraint, or the view that judges should uphold laws whether or not they like them.

Jeffrey Rosen

#34. [Louis Brandeis] believes in natural rights of speech and liberty and the right to pursue happiness.

Jeffrey Rosen

#35. For [Louis] Brandeis, it's not a technical question of channeling what would James Madison say. It's how do we take these inherent human natural rights of liberty and translate them into an age of new technolog

Jeffrey Rosen

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#38. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#40. Men feared witches and burned women.

Louis D. Brandeis

#41. 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

#42. A fruit is not afraid of its own weight. It grows into its skin fully. It is whole, each part of its body equally alive.

Gayle Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#50. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#52. 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

#53. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#59. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#61. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#64. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. From its first startling image, Orhans Inheritance will seep under your skin and leave an indelible mark upon your heart. What lucky readers we are to inherit Aline Ohanesians gorgeous work.

Gayle Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#74. Sunshine is the greatest disinfectant

Louis D. Brandeis

#75. 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

#76. There are no shortcuts in evolution.

Louis D. Brandeis

#77. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#80. 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

#81. In frank expression of conflicting opinion lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action; and in suppression lies ordinarily the greatest peril.

Louis Brandeis

#82. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#84. 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

#85. Where otherwise words were, flow discoveries, freed all surprised out of the fruit's flesh. RAINER MARIA RILKE

Gayle Brandeis

#86. 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

#87. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#89. 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

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

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

Louis D. Brandeis

#93. Come back to the heartbeat, the pulse, the rhythm we all walk to, regardless of nation or color. Come back to the breath - inhale, take the world deep into your lungs; exhale, give yourself back fully. This is what the body says: release the peace that lives within your skin.

Gayle Brandeis