Learned Hand

The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.

— Learned Hand

Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.

— Learned Hand

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

— Learned Hand

The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.

— Learned Hand

Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?

— Learned Hand

The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.

— Learned Hand

Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.

— Learned Hand

The art of publicity is a black art.

— Learned Hand

Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts,…

— Learned Hand

The use of history is to tell us what we are, for at our birth we are nearly empty vessels and we…

— Learned Hand

In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal

— Learned Hand

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

— Learned Hand

Today in America vast concourses of youth are flocking to our colleges, eager for something, just what they do not know.

— Learned Hand

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

— Learned Hand

Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.

— Learned Hand

Skepticism is my only gospel, but I don't want to make a dogma out of it.

— Learned Hand

What to an outsider will be no more than the vigorous presentation of a conviction, to an employee may be the manifestation…

— Learned Hand

You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to…

— Learned Hand

For, when all is said, as my friend George Rublee likes to put it, the only success is to be a success…

— Learned Hand

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has…

— Learned Hand

If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have…

— Learned Hand

Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent…

— Learned Hand

It is of course true that any kind of judicial legislation is objectionable on the score of the limited interests which a…

— Learned Hand

We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can; for by so doing we have made real at…

— Learned Hand

When I say that a thing is true, I mean that I cannot help believing it... But...I do not venture to assume…

— Learned Hand

I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken." I should like to have that written over…

— Learned Hand

Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the…

— Learned Hand

As soon as we cease to pry about at random, we shall come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma; and…

— Learned Hand

You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to…

— Learned Hand

Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and…

— Learned Hand

Each one of us must in the end choose for himself how far he would like to leave our collective fate to…

— Learned Hand

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it…

— Learned Hand

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

— Learned Hand

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.

— Learned Hand

There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.

— Learned Hand

We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity, the intolerable labor of thought.

— Learned Hand

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

— Learned Hand

Convention is like the shell to the chick, a protection till he is strong enough to break it through.

— Learned Hand

A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.

— Learned Hand

Tyranny is tyranny, no matter what its form; the free man will resist it if his courage serves.

— Learned Hand