Learned Hand Quotes

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.

We believe in humility and integrity, the spirit of one people, bound together under God. We understand that the Constitution was written to control and regulate the government, not the people.

Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.

America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice.

I am convinced that the majority of American people do understand that we have a moral responsibility to foster the concepts of opportunity, free enterprise, the rule of law, and democracy. They understand that these values are the hope of the world.

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

It lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted.

The highest test of a people's fitness for free institutions is their willingness to obey law.

From church to Congress, America has become a nation of self-indulgent, what's-in-it-for-me individual freedom seekers.

The law expresses the values and aspirations of our society.

The individual is prior to society and society must be ordered to the good of the individual.

We are blessed with more liberty than just about any other civilized people in history

A nation need not be a mob of slaves, clinging to one another through fear, and for the most part incapable of self-government, and begging to be led; but it might consist of vigorous self-reliant men, knit to one another by innumerable ties, into a strong, tense, and elastic organization.

Liberty—liberty within the law—and civilization are inseparable.

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?

The best investment the state can make is liberty and the rule of law—and respect for man’s dignity.

It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these value, we do so at our peril.

The price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization;

… by a free country I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbors, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like. That is not my notion of freedom.

… schools of liberty …. warehouses of disinterested patriotism

I respect the choice of the people and I respect the law.

All those who talk about democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, of human rights, of the fight against corruption are, I believe, important allies.

The Constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else.

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.