Quote #3

The law has outgrown its primitive stage of formalism when the precise word was the sovereign talisman, and every slip was fatal. It takes a broader view to-day. A promise may be lacking, and yet the whole writing may be 'instinct with an obligation,' imperfectly expressed. If that is so, there is a contract.

More from Benjamin N. Cardozo

  1. The defendant styles herself 'a creator of fashions.' Her favor helps a sale. Manufacturers of dresses, millinery and like articles are gla…
  2. Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of auth…
  3. Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
  4. Danger invites rescue. ... The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.
  5. Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.
  6. The whole problem of the relation between parent and subsidiary corporations is one that is still enveloped in the mists of metaphor. Metap…
  7. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.
  8. With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for gu…

All Benjamin N. Cardozo quotes