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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.

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
Attain
Royal
Interests
Concretely
Road
Accommodation
Justice
Accommodations
Interest
Conflicting
Society
Believe
Tolerable

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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 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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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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Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.
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Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
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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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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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Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.
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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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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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If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.
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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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In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal
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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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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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Skepticism is my only gospel, but I don't want to make a dogma out of it.
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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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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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There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.
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