Learned Hand Quotes

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.

If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online, you're going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there's no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I'm fine with the consequences.

Scholars will argue with each other about everything.

I don’t expect anyone to just sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

Argument is to me the air I breathe.

The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.

The purpose of debates is to explore issues, not end them.

I'm an academic. I'm hardwired for a good debate.

The more respect that objects, customs, or laws are given, the more attentively you must question the right these things have to this respect.

We are a fiercely argumentative lot.

There are truths to be discovered, but they are complex and many-sided; the best way to get to them is by engaging contrary ideas in a manner approximating dialogue.

I can't force people to agree with me.

Philosophy is a performance sport - you have to play it with somebody back and forth.

If you agree with everything I have said, then I have failed.

If you don't like what someone has to say, argue with them.

I will attack ideas very hard. I am not shy about that one bit. So I don't want people to think that because I had a call for civility that that means I shy away from debate and that I'm agreeable. That's not the case. What is the case is that I will not question who you are as a person.

I love a spirited debate.

I'm a fan of robust debate, and I'm not averse to engaging in the odd ad hominem attack myself.

Some people you struggle to argue with - they've got a lot of strong backing to what they say and what they do.

I wouldn't want to debate me every day.

I have the comedic chops and intelligence to raise points and discuss both sides of whatever is on our mind as a society.

It is not undemocratic to express one's difference of opinion.

If I'm saying something with an intelligent background, then at least it is creating conversation. Whether that conversation is people agreeing or disagreeing, I'm happy.

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.