Well-Meaning but Without Understanding

 
Justice Louis Brandeis

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

— Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)

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