Learned Hand Quotes

"Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution."

"Thou shalt not ration justice."

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

"If we are to keep democracy, there must be a commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice"

"They taught me, not by precept, but by example, that nothing is more commendable, and more fair, than that a man should lay aside all else, and seek truth; not to preach what he might find; and surely not to try to make his views prevail; but, like Lessing, to find his satisfaction in the search itself."

"The aim of law is the maximum gratification of the nervous system of man"

"(Common law) stands as a monument slowly raised, like a coral reef, from the minute accretions of past individuals, of whom each built upon the relics which his predecessors left, and in his turn left a foundation upon which his successors might work"

"It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our own choosing; when we do, the performance is itself the wage."

"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 understand the minds of other men and women."

"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."

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

"Yet with all the attraction that it has, our youth cannot long remain without feeling the narrowness of simply a classification of the world. Life is not a thing of knowing only - nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotion."

"Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"The aim of law is the maximum gratification of the nervous system of man."

"With the courage which only comes of justified self-confidence, he dared to rest his case upon its strongest point, and so avoided that appearance of weakness and uncertainty which comes of a clutter of arguments. Few lawyers are willing to do this; it is the mark of the most distinguished talent."