Learned Hand Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The use of history is to tell us what we are, for at our birth we are nearly empty vessels and we become what our tradition pours into us.

  Learned Hand

  Empty Vessels, History, Use

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

  15 Copy quote

• If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.

  Learned Hand

  Law, Liberty, Littles

  "United States v. Di Re". Judicial opinion, 1947.

  4 Copy quote

• Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.

  Learned Hand

  Impossible, Hated, Heretic

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

  9 Copy quote

• We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can; for by so doing we have made real at least some part of that finished product in whose fabrication we are most concerned: ourselves.

  Learned Hand

  Real, Winning, Done

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

  10 Copy quote

• We lose the forest for the trees, forgetting, even so far as we think at all, that we are trustees for those who come after us, squandering the patrimony which we have received.

  Learned Hand

  Thinking, Tree, Forests

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

  7 Copy quote

• The aim of law is the maximum gratification of the nervous system of man.

  Learned Hand

  Men, Law, Nervous

  9 Copy quote

• The condition of our survival in any but the meagerest existence is our willingness to accommodate ourselves to the conflicting interests of others, to learn to live in a social world.

  Learned Hand

  Survival, World, Social

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

  4 Copy quote

• A self-made man may prefer a self-made name.

  Learned Hand

  Men, Self, Names

  On Samuel Goldfish changing his name to Samuel Goldwyn, in Bosley Crowther 'Lion's Share' (1957) ch. 7

  7 Copy quote

• There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.

  Learned Hand

  Affair, Lows, Sinister

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

  5 Copy quote

• It is of course true that any kind of judicial legislation is objectionable on the score of the limited interests which a Court can represent, yet there are wrongs which in fact legislatures cannot be brought to take an interest in, at least not until the Courts have acted.

  Learned Hand

  Facts, Kind, Legislation

  Letter to Louis D. Brandeis, January 22, 1919.

  6 Copy quote

• It was not the violence of our enemies [in World War I] that would undo us, I thought, but our own spiritual weakness, the shallowness of our convictions.

  Learned Hand

  Spiritual, War, Enemy

  4 Copy quote

• Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.

  Learned Hand

  Powerful, Liberty, Weak

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

  7 Copy quote

• Each one of us must in the end choose for himself how far he would like to leave our collective fate to the wayward vagaries of popular assemblies For myself it would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not I should miss the stimulus of living in a society where I have, at least theoretically, some part in the direction of public affairs.

  Learned Hand

  Fate, Missing, Would Be

  4 Copy quote

• Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government.

  Learned Hand

  Passion, Men, Law

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

  7 Copy quote

• Life is not a thing of knowing only--nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotions.

  Learned Hand

  Knowledge, Knowing, Feelings

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

  4 Copy quote

• Every smallest step of modern industry depends upon a cooperation whose maintenance and regulation is the very stuff of law.

  Learned Hand

  Law, Maintenance, Regulation

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

  11 Copy quote

• It is often hard to secure unanimity about the borders of legislative power, but that is much easier than to decide how far a particular adjustment diverges from what the judges deem tolerable. On such issues experience has over and over again shown the difficulty of securing unanimity. This is disastrous because disunity cancels the impact of monolithic solidarity on which the authority of a bench of judges so largely depends.

  Learned Hand

  Issues, Impact, Judging

  "The Bill Of Rights". Book by Learned Hand, p. 72, 1958.

  20 Copy quote

• The profession of the law of which he [a judge] is a part is charged with the articulation and final incidence of the successive efforts towards justice; it must feel the circulation of the communal blood or it will wither and drop off, a useless member.

  Learned Hand

  Blood, Law, Justice

  8 Copy quote

• Conservative political opinion in America cleaves to the tradition of the judge as passive interpreter, believing that his absolute loyalty to authoritative law is the price of his immunity from political pressure and of the security of his tenure.

  Learned Hand

  Loyalty, Believe, Political Opinions

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

  4 Copy quote

• For, when all is said, as my friend George Rublee likes to put it, the only success is to be a success as a person; and it is still not too late for that.

  Learned Hand

  Too Late, Likes, Said

  4 Copy quote

• I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.

  Learned Hand

  Agreement, Way, Dean

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

  9 Copy quote

• Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent social classes, a basic uniformity of interest throughout.

  Learned Hand

  Class, Community, Democracy

  4 Copy quote

• I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.

  Learned Hand

  Gossip, Rumor, Inquiry

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

  7 Copy quote

• We all have our prayer-wheels which we set up on the steppes. The indifferent winds come and carry most of them away to gasp out their little lives in the desert, for few reach heaven.

  Learned Hand

  Prayer, Wind, Heaven

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

  4 Copy quote

• Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.

  Learned Hand

  Juxtaposition, Pebbles, Aliens

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

  90 Copy quote

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