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If you ask how he is to know when one interest outweighs another, I can only answer that he must get his knowledge just as the legislator gets it, from experience and study and reflection; in brief, from life itself.

— Benjamin N. Cardozo The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

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More quotes by Benjamin N. Cardozo

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

Metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it.

Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of authority, but add no quota of inspired wisdom.

Lecture at Yale University Law School (1923)

Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.

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