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Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.

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
Love
Hate
Constitution
Helping
Lies
Women
Liberty
Government
Law
Even
Dies
Libertarian
Heart
Lying
Save
Much
Help
Hearts
Men
Freedom
Court

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You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt.
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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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The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.
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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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Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered but it has generally proved impossible to smother them and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.
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A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.
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The mid-day sun is too much for most eyes one is dazzled even with its reflection. Be careful that too broad and high an aim does not paralyze your effort and clog your springs of action.
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Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent social classes, a basic uniformity of interest throughout.
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Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.
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We recently had a referendum in New York about extending the forest preserve. The city voted for it by a large majority yet as I walk the streets I do not see afforestation written with conviction on the harried faces of my fellow citizens.
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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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Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
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Conservative political opinion in America cleaves to the tradition of the judge as passive interpreter, believing that his absolute loyalty to authoritative law is the price of his immunity from political pressure and of the security of his tenure.
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The profession of the law of which he [a judge] is a part is charged with the articulation and final incidence of the successive efforts towards justice it must feel the circulation of the communal blood or it will wither and drop off, a useless member.
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Skepticism is my only gospel, but I don't want to make a dogma out of it.
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The condition of our survival in any but the meagerest existence is our willingness to accommodate ourselves to the conflicting interests of others, to learn to live in a social world.
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It is of course true that any kind of judicial legislation is objectionable on the score of the limited interests which a Court can represent, yet there are wrongs which in fact legislatures cannot be brought to take an interest in, at least not until the Courts have acted.
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No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture.
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Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.
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Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
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