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“While it is not always profitable to analogize "fact" to "fiction," La Fontaine's fable of the crow, the cheese, and the fox demonstrates that there is a substantial difference between holding a piece of cheese in the beak and putting it in the stomach.”

Felix Frankfurter

Alleghany Corp. v. Breswick & Co., 353 U.S. 151, 170 (1957).
Judicial opinions

“Morals are three-quarters manners.”

Felix Frankfurter

Source: Other writings, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), P. 12. In the interview, Phillips quotes the line to Frankfurter from a letter written by the Justice, and Frankfurter attributes the phrase to a friend named Matthew Arnold.

“I came into the world a Jew, and although I did not live my life entirely as a Jew, I think it is fitting that I should leave as a Jew. I don’t want to … turn my back on a great and noble heritage.”

Felix Frankfurter

Quoted by Garson Kanin in Atlantic (March 1964).
Other writings

“I do take law very seriously, deeply seriously, because fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.”

Felix Frankfurter

Source: Other writings, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), P. 189.

“Emerson said to him, "Young man, have you read Plato?" Holmes said he hadn't. "You must. You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'" Holmes said, "That's the lesson of independence." So off he went and read Plato for a few moths or a year, and then wrote a piece doing in Mr. Plato in one of those ephemeral literary things at Harvard. He laid this, as it were, at the feet of Mr. Emerson and awaited the next morning's mail, hoping to get a warm appreciation from Emerson. And the next day and the next and the next — no sign of life. No acknowledgment from Mr. Emerson. Holmes didn't see him again for about a year. When he saw him, this, that, and the other thing was again talked about. Emerson said, "Oh, by the way, I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him."”

Felix Frankfurter

Holmes said, "That was the second great lesson — humility."
Source: Other writings, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), P. 59.

“Time and experience have forcefully taught that the power to inspect dwelling places, either as a matter of systematic area-by-area search or, as here, to treat a specific problem, is of indispensable importance in the maintenance of community health; a power that would be greatly hobbled by the blanket requirement of the safeguards necessary for a search of evidence of criminal acts.”

Felix Frankfurter

Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, 372 (1959); majority opinion in 5-4 ruling that allowed health inspectors to enter a private home without a search warrant (May 4, 1959).
Judicial opinions

“In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions.”

Felix Frankfurter

Concurring, Graves v. New York ex rel. O'Keefe, 306 U.S. 446 (1939).
Judicial opinions

“Decisions of this Court do not have intrinsic authority.”

Felix Frankfurter

Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 59 (1947).
Judicial opinions

“No court can make time stand still.”

Felix Frankfurter

Writing for the court, Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. FCC, 316 U.S. 4 (1942).
Judicial opinions

“Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.”

Felix Frankfurter

New York Times (November 28, 1954).
Judicial opinions

“It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.”

Felix Frankfurter

United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950).
Judicial opinions

“Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.”

Felix Frankfurter

Concurring, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
Judicial opinions

“The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.”

Felix Frankfurter

Concurring, Graves v. New York ex rel. O'Keefe, 306 U.S. 446 (1939).
Judicial opinions

“In law also the emphasis makes the song.”

Felix Frankfurter

Bethlehem Steel Co. v. New York State Labor Relations Board 330 U.S. 767, 780 (1947).
Judicial opinions

“In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.”

Felix Frankfurter

Dissenting, Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962).
Judicial opinions

“One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution… But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.”

Felix Frankfurter

Dissenting, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
Judicial opinions

“It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of 'laws' to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it.”

Felix Frankfurter

Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. v. Browning, 310 U.S. 362, 369 (1940).
Judicial opinions

“Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate.”

Felix Frankfurter

Dissenting, Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 270 (1962).
Judicial opinions

“It is true of opinions as of other compositions that those who are seeped in them, whose ears are sensitive to literary nuances, whose antennae record subtle silences, can gather from their contents meaning beyond the words. All this presupposes, of course, a grasp of the nature of the Supreme Court's functions — the scope and limits of its constitutional authority — and often, as well, familiarity with the record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion is under scrutiny.”

Felix Frankfurter

"'The Administrative Side' of Chief Justice Hughes", 63 Harvard Law Review 1, 2 (1949).
Other writings

“If nowhere else, in the relation between Church and State, "good fences make good neighbors."”

Felix Frankfurter

McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 232 (1948).
Judicial opinions