Time & Perspective Quote by Learned Hand

History is the most respectable weapon in the room, which is exactly why Learned Hand treats it with suspicion. In one neat turn, he pairs two seemingly opposite authorities - history and scripture - and then tarnishes both by reminding you how easily they can be ventriloquized. The line lands because it refuses the comforting idea that the past, properly consulted, will deliver a verdict. Hand is warning that citation is not the same as judgment: you can cherry-pick episodes, founders, precedents, even atrocities, and dress almost any agenda in the robes of inevitability.

The devil-scripture image does extra work. It concedes that the text is real, even sacred to some, while insisting that bad-faith interpretation can make holiness serve harm. Applied to history, it suggests that the archive is not self-policing; meaning is produced by selection, framing, and emphasis. That is the subtext modern readers recognize in everything from partisan “Founding Fathers” cosplay to culture-war timelines that begin and end wherever they need to.

Hand’s context as a judge matters. In American legal culture, “history” often masquerades as neutral constraint on power: what the framers intended, what tradition allows, what was “always” the case. Hand, a leading judicial mind of his era, knew how seductive that move is in courtrooms and constitutions alike. The intent isn’t to banish history, but to strip it of its false innocence. If you want to persuade with the past, he implies, you’d better admit you’re making an argument - not receiving a revelation.