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

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Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?
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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 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.
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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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Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
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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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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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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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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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Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
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Reputation, like a face, is the symbol of its possessor and creator, and another can use it only as a mask.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.
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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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