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

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
Liberty
Emerging
Carnage
Black
Ancestor
Perilous
Others
Superstitions
Ovens
Stills
Carrying
Crawling
Still
Equipment
Amid
Steaming
Must
Charity
Atrocities
Moist
Would
Hold
Superstition
Atrocity
World
Present
Ancestors
Ferocious

More quotes by Learned Hand

Image
If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.
Learned Hand
Image
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
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
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
In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
Learned Hand
Image
Those of us who have come to years of discretion and more, must often take to retrospect, and seek to appraise the outcome of our lives.
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
Reputation, like a face, is the symbol of its possessor and creator, and another can use it only as a mask.
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
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
Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
Learned Hand
Image
No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture.
Learned Hand
Image
Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us.
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
Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.
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
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women.
Learned Hand
Image
The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.
Learned Hand
Image
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
Image
The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.
Learned Hand