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Louis D. Brandeis

Louis D. Brandeis Quotes

Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

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Famous Louis D. Brandeis Quotes

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." [Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)]”

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“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retributions.”

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Author:Louis D. Brandeis
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“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

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Author:Louis D. Brandeis
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“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.”

GovernmentPurposeLibertyTeachCitizensProtectLibertarianPrivacyAmendmentsRulersFirst AmendmentGoverningFreedom And LibertyFree SocietyFreedom LibertyCivil LibertiesProperty RightsLimited GovernmentVigilanceRight To Bear ArmsBearing ArmsInsidiousLimiting GovernmentRights And FreedomsLibertarian PartyFounding Fathers GunLimited FreedomEncroachmentEternal VigilanceLiberty And JusticePrice Of FreedomSupreme Court JusticeLimiting FreedomAmendment 1Government PolicyFourth AmendmentGovernment And PoliticsFreedom To ReadGovernment PoliticsLaw CourtsControlling GovernmentLiberty And Justice For AllSecurity And FreedomPurpose Of GovernmentJustice TruthDivided GovernmentConflicting OpinionsWrits Of Assistance
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“Those who won our independence... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.”

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Book:Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It
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“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

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“The constitutional right of free speech has been declared to be the same in peace and war. In peace, too, men may differ widely as to what loyalty to our country demands, and an intolerant majority, swayed by passion or by fear, may be prone in the future, as it has been in the past, to stamp as disloyal opinions with which it disagrees.”

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“Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... 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... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.”

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“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.”

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Author:Louis D. Brandeis
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