Learned Hand Quotes - Page 4

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.

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.

We all have our prayer-wheels which we set up on the steppes. The indifferent winds come and carry most of them away to gasp out their little lives in the desert, for few reach heaven.

What to an outsider will be no more than the vigorous presentation of a conviction, to an employee may be the manifestation of a determination which it is not safe to thwart.

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.

For myself it would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not.

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture.

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.

Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.

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

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.

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.

Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.

We prate of freedom; we are in deadly fear of life, as much of our own American scene betrays.

The art of publicity is a black art.

Here I am an old man in a long nightgown making muffled noises at people who may be no worse than I am.

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

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.

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. I am satisfied that a scholar who tries to combine these parts sells his birthright for a mess of pottage; that, when the final count is made, it will be found that the impairment of his powers far outweighs any possible contribution to the causes he has espoused.