Learned Hand
Learned Hand
Billings Learned Handwas a United States judge and judicial philosopher. He served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and later the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Hand has been quoted more often by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the United States than any other lower-court judge...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth27 January 1872
CountryUnited States of America
survival world social
The condition of our survival in any but the meagerest existence is our willingness to accommodate ourselves to the conflicting interests of others, to learn to live in a social world.
prayer wind heaven
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.
life scene betray
We prate of freedom; we are in deadly fear of life, as much of our own American scene betrays.
years two liberty
The spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned ... .
support doubt devil
No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture.
successful winning competition
The successful competitor, having been urged to compete, must not be turned on when he wins.
determination may safe
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.
patriotic may patterns
Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase ones taxes.
stuff mold enough
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.
tangled may matter
Life in a great society, or for that matter in a small, is a web of tangled relations of all sorts, whose adjustment so that it may be endurable is an extraordinarily troublesome matter.
fate missing would-be
Each one of us must in the end choose for himself how far he would like to leave our collective fate to the wayward vagaries of popular assemblies 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 I should miss the stimulus of living in a society where I have, at least theoretically, some part in the direction of public affairs.
rely-upon liberty body
As soon as we cease to pry about at random, we shall come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma; and as soon as we come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma, not only are the days of our liberty over, but we have lost the password that has hitherto opened to us the gates of success as well.
maturity years outcomes
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.
learning college america
Today in America vast concourses of youth are flocking to our colleges, eager for something, just what they do not know.