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The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.

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
Sure
Freedom
Spirit
Right
Liberty
Quite

More quotes by Learned Hand

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As soon as we cease to pry about at random, we shall come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma and as soon as we come to rely upon accredited bodies of authoritative dogma, not only are the days of our liberty over, but we have lost the password that has hitherto opened to us the gates of success as well.
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Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.
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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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Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
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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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Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us.
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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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The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.
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It is still in the lap of the gods whether a society can succeed which is based on civil liberties and human rights conceived as I have tried to describe them but of one thing at least we may be sure: the alternatives that have so far appeared have been immeasurably worse.
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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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The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.
Learned Hand
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No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture.
Learned Hand
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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.
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A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.
Learned Hand
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Every smallest step of modern industry depends upon a cooperation whose maintenance and regulation is the very stuff of law.
Learned Hand
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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.
Learned Hand
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In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
Learned Hand
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It was not the violence of our enemies [in World War I] that would undo us, I thought, but our own spiritual weakness, the shallowness of our convictions.
Learned Hand
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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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A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.
Learned Hand