Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.
Interpretation
Democracy requires continual effort and is never fully achieved.
In this quote, Felix Frankfurter emphasizes that democracy is not a destination where one can simply rest after reaching it; instead, it is an ongoing process that demands constant commitment and work. He suggests that freedom and democracy are dynamic pursuits that require vigilance and active participation to maintain and improve, rather than static states of being.
In practice
During a lecture on civic engagement, this quote can illustrate the importance of active participation in democracy.
Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and a democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims.
The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.
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.
The words of the Constitution... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.
As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.
It is an item of faith that we are children of God; there is plenty of experience in us against it. The faith that surmounts this evidence and is able to warm itself at the fire of God's love, instead of having to steal love and self-acceptance from other sources, is actually the root of holiness: It is a fatal mistake to think of holiness as a possession which we have distinct from our faith... Faith is the very highest form of our dependence on God.
The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes subordinate to a secular concept of weekend dominated by such things as entertainment and sport, people stay locked within a horizon so narrow that they can no longer see the heavens.
If the day comes when you would find me again, give that coin to any man from Braavos, and say these words to him--valar morghulis.
It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
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