Learned Hand Quotes

In any country, governance issues are there. Challenges are there, pressures are there. When multi-party coalitions take decisions, sometimes delays will be there. But that is what democracy is: it is beauty or it's challenge.

A political theory seeks to find from history the limits of the politically possible.

If you can't control these rumheads when you're their candidate, how the hell do you expect to control them if you become President?

All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.

Precedents are dangerous things; let the rein of government then be braced and held with a steady hand.

Government is a necessary evil

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

High politic is only common sense applied to great things.

Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanical glitch that unites everything. This is my philosophy.

If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a State, how comes it to be so in a family?

Politics is not a science...but an art.

When are people going to learn? Democracy doesn't work.

Governments arise either out of the people or over the people.

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.

Politics is different than business.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

Because the good old rule Sufficeth them,-the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can.

She didn't know a lot about politics – yet – but she'd learned enough in her history classes to know politics could always be counted on to make a bad situation worse.

Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.

The Philosophy of Princes is to dive into the Secrets of men, leaving the secrets of nature to those that have spare time.

Politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.