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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
Ever
Come
Punish
Seldom
Late
Shall
Wisdom
Comes
Doe

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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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Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.
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No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics it grows less and less so.
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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 spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not quite sure it is right.
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Since we are men, we will play the part of Man.
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The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.
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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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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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If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.
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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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The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.
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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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It was not the violence of our enemies [in World War I] that would undo us, I thought, but our own spiritual weakness, the shallowness of our convictions.
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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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Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
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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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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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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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