“Wealth, power, the struggle for ephemeral social and political prestige, which so absorb our attention and energy, are but the passing phase of every age; ninety-day wonders which pass from man’s recollection almost before the actors who have striven from them have passed from the stage. … What is significant in the record of man’s development is none of these. It is rather those forces in society and the lives of those individuals, who have, in each generation, added something to man’s intellectual and moral attainment, that lay hold on the imagination and compel admiration and reverence in each succeeding generation.”

— Harlan F. Stone

Reported in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone, Pillar of the Law (1956), p. 209
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Harlan F. Stone 14

United States federal judge 1872–1946

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