Learned Hand quotes - page 3

You may ask what then will become of the fundamental principles of equity and fair play which our constitutions enshrine; and whether I seriously believe that unsupported they will serve merely as counsels of moderation. I do not think that anyone can say what will be left of those principles; I do not know whether they will serve only as counsels; but this much I think I do know - that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish. (Learned Hand)
I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken. View quote
Learned Hand
No, the children must learn to play by themselves; there is no Jack the master. View quote
Learned Hand
Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming. View quote
Learned Hand
The day has clearly gone forever of societies small enough for their members to have personal acquaintance with one another, and to find their station through the appraisal of those who have first hand knowledge of them. View quote
Learned Hand
The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial. View quote
Learned Hand
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. View quote
Learned Hand
The law, being an inherited accumulation, imposes itself on each generation willy-nilly. View quote
Learned Hand
The judge's authority depends upon the assumption that he speaks with the mouth of others. View quote
Learned Hand
We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. View quote
Learned Hand
The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country whether we like it or not, we must learn to accept it. (Learned Hand)
But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another, to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten the game. View quote
Learned Hand
When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. View quote
Learned Hand
What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? View quote
Learned Hand
The art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency. View quote
Learned Hand
Thou shalt not ration justice. View quote
Learned Hand
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. View quote
Learned Hand
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. View quote
Learned Hand
The day has clearly gone forever of societies small enough for their members to have personal acquaintance with one another, and to find their station through the appraisal of those who have first hand knowledge of them. Publicity is an evil substitute and the art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, every year adds to its potency and to the finality of its judgments. The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country whether we like it or not, we must learn to accept it. View quote
Learned Hand