113 Quotes by Learned Hand

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

There is something monstrous in commands couched in invented and unfamiliar language; an alien master is the worst of all. The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.

Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.

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.

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

There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.

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.

The successful competitor, having been urged to compete, must not be turned on when he wins.

It is of course true that any kind of judicial legislation is objectionable on the score of the limited interests which a Court can represent, yet there are wrongs which in fact legislatures cannot be brought to take an interest in, at least not until the Courts have acted.