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We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.

Learned Hand

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Learned Hand
Age: 89 †
Born: 1872
Born: January 27
Died: 1961
Died: August 18
Judge
Lawyer
Philosopher
Albany
New York
Billings Learned Hand
Upon
Inertia
Force
Cries
Action
Cry
Past
Accept
Change
Comfort
Need
Choice
Loudly
Enough
Accepting
Verdict
Needs
Choices
Comforts

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Life in a great society, or for that matter in a small, is a web of tangled relations of all sorts, whose adjustment so that it may be endurable is an extraordinarily troublesome matter.
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There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
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Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
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In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal
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If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.
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Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don't believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.
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Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.
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For, when all is said, as my friend George Rublee likes to put it, the only success is to be a success as a person and it is still not too late for that.
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If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.
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There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.
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No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics it grows less and less so.
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Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?
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The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country.
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Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.
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We all have our prayer-wheels which we set up on the steppes. The indifferent winds come and carry most of them away to gasp out their little lives in the desert, for few reach heaven.
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The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.
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Life is not a thing of knowing only--nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotions.
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