Louis Brandeis Zitate (45 Zitate, seite 2) | Zitate berühmter Personen

Albert Einstein, statement sent to the Boston journal The Jewish Advocate on 1931-10-19 on the occasion of Justice Brandeis' seventy-fifth birthday, quoted in Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton University Press, 1981), ISBN 0-691-02368-9, p. 85.

“With deepest veneration and fellow feeling, I clasp your hand on the occasion of your eightieth birthday. I know of no other person who combines such profound intellectual gifts with such self-renunciation while finding the whole meaning of his life in quiet service to the community. We -- all of us -- thank you not only for what you have accomplished and brought about, but also because we feel happy that such a man should exist at all in this time of ours, which is so lacking in genuine personalities.
With reverent greetings….”

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

Albert Einstein, letter to Justice Brandeis on 1936-11-10, ibid.
Dukas and Hoffman comment: "the handwritten original is among the Brandeis papers at the Law School of the University of Louisville."

“The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping. Ways may some day 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. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. 'That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer' was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these. 1 To Lord Camden a far slighter intrusion seemed 'subversive of all the comforts of society.”

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?
Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions

“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375 (1927), at 375. In this case, in which the Court upheld a California anti-Communist statute, Brandeis, writing in a concurrence joined by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concurred in the judgment but not in the reasoning. Whitney was later overruled (with the later Court adopting Brandeis's reasoning) in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
Judicial opinions

“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.”

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

“True Americanism” (1915).
Extra-judicial writings

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

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (15 October 1912), as cited in A Treasury of Jewish Quotations, ed. Joseph L. Baron, Rowman & Littlefield (1996), p. 269 : ISBN 1568219482
Extra-judicial writings

“Every case that fell to him for opinion gave fresh occasion for the application of his principle that knowledge must precede understanding, and understanding should precede judging.”

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

Paul A. Freund, Proceedings in Memory of Mr. Justice Brandeis, 317 U.S. ix, xix–xx (1942).

“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.... For only through the ennobling effect of its strivings can we develop the best that is in us and give to this country the full benefit of our great inheritance.”

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

The Jewish Problem And How to Solve It (1915).
Extra-judicial writings

“Go down to City Hall and see what is on the agenda for the next council meeting—garbage collection, water supply, it does not matter which one—then go and learn everything you can about it. Read past reports, talk to people, learn the topic until you know it as well as anyone. Then when you get up to speak, or to make a suggestion for change, your voice will be heard because you are knowledgeable. That is how reform works.”

Help us translate this quote

Louis Brandeis

According to daughter Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush, as told to biographer Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (2009), p. 130.
Attributed