Louis Brandeis

"If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold."

"Behind every argument is someones ignorance."

"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."

"There must be opportunities for judgment to mature. When, therefore, you increase your business to a very great extent, and the multitude of problems increase with its growth, you will find, in the first place, that the man at the head has a diminishing knowledge of the facts and, in the second place, a diminishing opportunity of exercising a careful judgment upon them."

"The bow must be strung and unstrung . . . there must be time also for the unconscious thinking which comes to the busy man in his play."

"[T]hat which is man-made can be unmade."