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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.

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
Facts
Raises
Disconcerting
Keep
Ears
Relieve
Cannot
Standards
Breach
Stills
Cold
Leap
Still
Doubt
Oppression
Every
Open
Standard
Mind
Fact
Raise
Voice
Injustice

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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 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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Skepticism is my only gospel, but I don't want to make a dogma out of it.
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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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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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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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The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country.
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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 spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.
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The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.
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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.
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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 lawyer must either learn to live more capaciously or be content to find himself continuously less trusted, more circumscribed, till he becomes hardly more important than a minor administrator, confined to a monotonous round of record and routine, without dignity, inspiration, or respect.
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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 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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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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It is the daily it is the small it is the cumulative injuries of little people that we are here to protect....If we are able to keep our democracy, there must be once commandment: THOU SHALT NOT RATION JUSTICE.
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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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