Learned Hand Quotes

Whether that be starting conversations about environmental conservation or taking part in being a voice for people who don't have a voice, I just want to help people however I can.

One of the great crimes of the Bloomberg/Klein administration [in New York City] is that they've removed themselves from communities, as if communities have nothing to say about what their needs and aspirations are for themselves and for their children.

On a certain day, month and year one should observe the ceremony of tree-planting. Thus, one fulfils one's responsibilities, serves one's fellow-beings which not only brings happiness but benefits all.

We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.

People had said to me New York is kind of cutthroat and people walk past you on the street. I find it the opposite. I find that people want to talk.

New York is the dirtiest, largest, ugliest, broken-down city in the world-but it's the only one.

I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.

New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.

Honesty is the best policy ; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis in the city.

I always said that what I do is street knowledge, you let the street know what the politicians of today are doing, and if the politicians are listening, let them know what the streets think.

New York City was the world's biggest vibrator. Everything vibrated above, and below the streets.

I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.

I love the city. I love the energy of New York and what happens here. But I'm very happy I don't live in the city on a daily basis, because I really do spend a great deal of my time, when I'm not on the road, in my studio - everyday, everyday, everyday.

The consequences of these institutions (The towns or districts, the congregations, the schools,and the militia.) have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on.

I will say, though, that San Francisco is a very friendly city. It's the kind of place where people smile at you and you can strike up conversations on the street, so there's always an adjustment when I come back to New York. If I smile at someone on the street in New York, then they think there's something up - like, "Why is she smiling?"

New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people at the next restaurant table (micrometers away) checking your watch, of people reading the stories in your newspaper on the subway train.

Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.

I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active.

I guess I've learned more from the Clearwater than anything else. All I did was help to plant a seed, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well?

In New York City, a lot of people think "the great outdoors" is the area between your front door and a taxi cab.

New York is such a special place. It's really intense for people because they live here when they're young. On top of the energy of the city there's a visceral experience a lot of people have because it's a time in their lives where they're just absorbing a lot. Things take on a significance that they might not otherwise.

Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy.

These New York City streets get colder, I shoulder every burden every disadvantage I've learned to manage. I don't have a gun to brandish. I walk these streets famished.