Quote

Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.

Learned Hand

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Learned Hand
Age: 89 †
Born: 1872
Born: January 27
Died: 1961
Died: August 18
Judge
Lawyer
Philosopher
Albany
New York
Billings Learned Hand
Men
Since
Part
Play

More quotes by Learned Hand

Image
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
Image
It is the daily it is the small it is the cumulative injuries of little people that we are here to protect....If we are able to keep our democracy, there must be once commandment: THOU SHALT NOT RATION JUSTICE.
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don't believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.
Learned Hand
Image
Skepticism is my only gospel, but I don't want to make a dogma out of it.
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.
Learned Hand
Image
No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture.
Learned Hand
Image
We recently had a referendum in New York about extending the forest preserve. The city voted for it by a large majority yet as I walk the streets I do not see afforestation written with conviction on the harried faces of my fellow citizens.
Learned Hand
Image
A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.
Learned Hand
Image
If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.
Learned Hand