Louis D. Brandeis
Louis D. Brandeis
Louis Dembitz Brandeiswas an American lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents from Bohemia, who raised him in a secular home. He attended Harvard Law School, graduating at the age of twenty with the highest grade average in the law school's history. Brandeis settled in Boston, where he founded a law firmand became a recognized lawyer through his work on progressive...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJudge
Date of Birth13 November 1856
CountryUnited States of America
Louis D. Brandeis quotes about
Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.
No system of regulation can safely be substituted for the operation of individual liberty as expressed in competition.
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.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant
We learned long ago that liberty could be preserved only by limiting in some way the freedom of action of individuals; that otherwise liberty would necessarily yield to absolutism; and in the same way we have learned that unless there be regulation of competition, its excesses will lead to the destruction of competition, and monopoly will take its place.
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.
If you would venture, let your mind be bold . . . not reckless but bold.
There is a spark of idealism within every individual which can be fanned into flame and bring forth extraordinary results.
The most important office... that of private citizen.
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly.
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.
To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.
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.
What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.