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Skepticism is my only gospel, but I don't want to make a dogma out of 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
Skepticism
Dogma
Gospel
Make

More quotes by Learned Hand

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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 hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country.
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Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.
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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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Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?
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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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In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal
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The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.
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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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Every smallest step of modern industry depends upon a cooperation whose maintenance and regulation is the very stuff of law.
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Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.
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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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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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There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
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