Quote

In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.

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
Worse
Risk
Running
Ends
Suppress
Heresy
Dissent
Orthodox

More quotes by Learned Hand

Image
In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal
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
The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.
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
Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
Learned Hand
Image
Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
Learned Hand
Image
Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.
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
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
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.
Learned Hand
Image
The lawyer must either learn to live more capaciously or be content to find himself continuously less trusted, more circumscribed, till he becomes hardly more important than a minor administrator, confined to a monotonous round of record and routine, without dignity, inspiration, or respect.
Learned Hand
Image
Reputation, like a face, is the symbol of its possessor and creator, and another can use it only as a mask.
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
As soon as we cease to pry about at random, we shall come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma and as soon as we come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma, not only are the days of our liberty over, but we have lost the password that has hitherto opened to us the gates of success as well.
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
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 still in the lap of the gods whether a society can succeed which is based on civil liberties and human rights conceived as I have tried to describe them but of one thing at least we may be sure: the alternatives that have so far appeared have been immeasurably worse.
Learned Hand
Image
The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.
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
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