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Seldom, if ever, does wisdom come, shall we punish it if it comes late?

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
Shall
Wisdom
Comes
Doe
Ever
Come
Punish
Seldom
Late

More quotes by Learned Hand

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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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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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A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.
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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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Life is not a thing of knowing only--nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotions.
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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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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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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.
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The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.
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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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There is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.
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Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.
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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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Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.
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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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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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Our common law is the stock instance of a combination of custom and its successive adaptations.
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Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.
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