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If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.

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
Keep
Ration
Political
Rations
Must
Commandment
Shalt
Commandments
Thou
Democracy
Justice

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In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
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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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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.
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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 spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.
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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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Would we hold liberty, we must have charity- charity to others, charity to ourselves, crawling up from the moist ovens of a steaming world, still carrying the passional equipment of our ferocious ancestors, emerging from black superstition amid carnage and atrocity to our perilous present.
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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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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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Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.
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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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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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There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.
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Every smallest step of modern industry depends upon a cooperation whose maintenance and regulation is the very stuff of law.
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There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
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Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?
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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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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 fathers who contrived and passed the Consititution were wise in their generation as time passes, we come more and more to realize their powers of divination.
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