Learned Hand Men Quotations

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

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

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

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. 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; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.