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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.

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
Another
Symbol
Like
Mask
Symbols
Reputation
Creator
Face
Faces
Use
Possessor

More quotes by Learned Hand

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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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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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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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The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.
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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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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.
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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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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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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 mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.
Learned Hand
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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.
Learned Hand
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A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.
Learned Hand
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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.
Learned Hand
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In america, there are two tax systems: one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both are legal
Learned Hand
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Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
Learned Hand
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Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
Learned Hand
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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.
Learned Hand
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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.
Learned Hand
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Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?
Learned Hand
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There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
Learned Hand