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We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can for by so doing we have made real at least some part of that finished product in whose fabrication we are most concerned: ourselves.

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
Loses
Least
Fabrication
Winning
Product
Part
Finished
May
Products
Done
Concerned
Real
Whose
Made
Lose

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No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture.
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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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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 public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.
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Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
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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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Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
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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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In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal
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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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The condition of our survival in any but the meagerest existence is our willingness to accommodate ourselves to the conflicting interests of others, to learn to live in a social world.
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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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A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.
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The fathers who contrived and passed the Consititution were wise in their generation as time passes, we come more and more to realize their powers of divination.
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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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The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine, rules the country.
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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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Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.
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Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?
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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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