Learned Hand Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.

  Learned Hand

  Life, Answers, Action

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  37 Copy quote

• Skepticism is my only gospel, but I don't want to make a dogma out of it.

  Learned Hand

  Want, Dogma, Skepticism

  14 Copy quote

• The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.

  Learned Hand

  Freedom, Liberty, Spirit

  8 Copy quote

• Convention is like the shell to the chick, a protection till he is strong enough to break it through.

  Learned Hand

  Strong, Shells, Protection

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  7 Copy quote

• You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt.

  Learned Hand

  Voice, Doubt, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.

  Learned Hand

  Inspirational, Way, Documents

  "Giuseppe v. Walling". Judicial opinion, 1944.

  10 Copy quote

• Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase ones taxes.

  Learned Hand

  Patriotic, Advice, Pay

  Helvering v. Gregory (1934)

  8 Copy quote

• The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.

  Learned Hand

  Confusion, Voting, Apathy

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  4 Copy quote

• Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.

  Learned Hand

  Upset, Taste, Furniture

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  13 Copy quote

• The mid-day sun is too much for most eyes; one is dazzled even with its reflection. Be careful that too broad and high an aim does not paralyze your effort and clog your springs of action.

  Learned Hand

  Spring, Eye, Reflection

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  20 Copy quote

• There is no fury like that against one who, we fear, may succeed in making us disloyal to beliefs we hold with passion, but have not really won.

  Learned Hand

  Anger, Passion, May

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  4 Copy quote

• How long shall we blunder along without the aid of unpartisan and authoritative scientific assistance in the administration of justice, no one knows; but all fair persons not conventionalized by provincial legal habits of mind ought, I should think, unite to effect some change.

  Learned Hand

  Thinking, Long, Justice

  "Parke, Davis & Co. v. H. K. Mulford Co". Judicial opinion, 1911.

  6 Copy quote

• Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?

  Learned Hand

  Doe, Late, Ifs

  13 Copy quote

• All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.

  Learned Hand

  Upset, Atheism, Purpose

  Learned Hand (1955). “A fanfare for Prometheus”

  7 Copy quote

• Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.

  Learned Hand

  Men, Brotherhood Of Man, Justice

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  8 Copy quote

• When I say that a thing is true, I mean that I cannot help believing it... But...I do not venture to assume that my inabilities in the way of thought are inabilities of the universe. I therefore define truth as the system of my limitations, and leave absolute truth for those who are better equipped.

  Learned Hand

  Believe, Mean, Inability

  10 Copy quote

• The legal relations between the individual and the community which arise out of the production and distribution of property, comprise by far the greater, and more important, part of the law; subtract these and very little content would be left.

  Learned Hand

  Law, Community, Important

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  22 Copy quote

• No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so.

  Learned Hand

  Political, Support, Doubt

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  18 Copy quote

• The fathers who contrived and passed the Consititution were wise in their generation; as time passes, we come more and more to realize their powers of divination.

  Learned Hand

  Wise, Father, Generations

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  8 Copy quote

• The spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned ... .

  Learned Hand

  Years, Two, Liberty

  Brainerd Currie, Learned Hand, United States. Supreme Court (1953). “The Supreme Court: an NBC radio discussion”

  7 Copy quote

• If a community decides that some conduct is prejudicial to itself, and so decides by numbers sufficient to impose its will upon dissenters, I know of no principle which can stay its hand.

  Learned Hand

  Hands, Numbers, Community

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  9 Copy quote

• Life in a great society, or for that matter in a small, is a web of tangled relations of all sorts, whose adjustment so that it may be endurable is an extraordinarily troublesome matter.

  Learned Hand

  Tangled, May, Matter

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  18 Copy quote

• Would we hold liberty, we must have charity- charity to others, charity to ourselves, crawling up from the moist ovens of a steaming world, still carrying the passional equipment of our ferocious ancestors, emerging from black superstition amid carnage and atrocity to our perilous present.

  Learned Hand

  Black, Liberty, Atrocities

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

  25 Copy quote

• What seems fair enough against a squalid huckster of bad liquor may take on a different face, if used by a government determined to suppress political opposition under the guise of sedition.

  Learned Hand

  Government, Different Faces, Political

  Learned Hand (1968). “The art and craft of judging: the decisions of Judge Learned Hand”

  7 Copy quote

• The judge's authority depends upon the assumption that he speaks with the mouth of others. That is to say, the momentum of his utterances must be greater than any which his personal reputation and character can command, if it is to do the work assigned to it - if it is to stand against the passionate resentments arising out of the interests he must frustrate - for while a judge must discover some composition with the dominant trends of his times, he must preserve his authority by cloaking himself in the majesty of an overshadowing past.

  Learned Hand

  Character, Past, Judging

  The New York Times, October 06, 1963.

  12 Copy quote

Page 2 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin