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The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understands the minds of other men and women.

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
Freedom
Spirit
Women
Right
Seeks
Mind
Understands
Men
Minds
Liberty
Sure

More quotes by Learned Hand

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The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.
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Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
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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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The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.
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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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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 not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
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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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If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.
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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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Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
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A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.
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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 apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.
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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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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.
Learned Hand
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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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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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Those of us who have come to years of discretion and more, must often take to retrospect, and seek to appraise the outcome of our lives.
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.
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