Learned Hand Quotes

You'll find individuals agreeing on this, but when they get into collective societies and larger groups they find it difficult to achieve group agreement.

The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority.

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.

Everything, everywhere, shall be decided by majority vote.

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.

I warn against the tyranny of the majority of the people with good table manners.

The public does not necessarily want to hear, much less to act on unsettling or disturbing findings… censorship can be, and is frequently supported by the majority of the population.

The human race is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.

The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.

Conformity may not always reign in the prosperous bourgeois suburb, but it ultimately always governs.

What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.

The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached.

Much Madness is divinest Sense -- To a discerning Eye -- Much Sense -- the starkest Madness -- 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail -- Assent -- and you are sane -- Demur -- you're straightway dangerous -- And handled with a Chain --

There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.

There is as much difference between a collection of mentally free citizens and a community molded by modern methods of propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a battleship.

But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying.

Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force.

If the people allow something to happen, it's the right thing.

What was the use of trying to expound a truth, if the majority preferred a lie?

Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.

With the greatest respect, we do not make the criminal law on the basis of opinion polls. A majority of 9:1 could be in favour of a ban in my constituency, but I would not regard that as conclusive, and I hope that we never would. If we start having opinion polls about all the unpleasant and distasteful habits and customs of some members of society, and suggesting that their findings should be made part of the criminal law, foxhunting would come way down the list, and quite a lot of strange enactments would have to go through the House.

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.

Whoever the kid had been, whoever had had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: )You just change your attitude now please, young man.