Quotes from Learned Hand

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

If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.

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

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.

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.

Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.

1. The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country. 2. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.

There is no fury like that against one who, we fear, may succeed in making us disloyal to beliefs we hold with passion, but have not really won.

The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.

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

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.

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