Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

The law is reason, free from passion.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

In cross examination, as in fishing, nothing is more ungainly than a fisherman pulled into the water by his catch.

Nizer, Louis

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

Halifax, Edward F.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principles of fear or reason, but from passion.

Montesquieu, Charles De

The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.

Welles, Orson

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.

Puzo, Mario

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.

Sade, Marquis De

It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Diderot, Denis

10.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.

Thoreau, Henry David

11.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

Roosevelt, Theodore

12.

It is unfair to believe everything we hear about lawyers, some of it might not be true.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

13.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

14.

Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

La Bruyere, Jean De

15.

Laws are not masters, but servants, and he rules them, who obeys them.

Becker, Ward

16.

The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.

Hughes, Charles Evans

17.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

18.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

19.

I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.

Voltaire

20.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

21.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

King Jr. Martin Luther

22.

No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

Arendt, Hannah

23.

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.

Mille, Cecil B. De

24.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

25.

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.

Brecht, Bertolt

26.

Written laws are like spider's webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and the poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

Anacharsis

27.

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.

Beecher, Henry Ward

28.

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

29.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Johnson, Samuel

30.

Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.

Dickens, Charles

31.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

Engels, Friedrich

32.

As soon as you begin to say We have always done things this way -- perhaps that might be a better way, conscious law-making is beginning. As soon as you begin to say We do things this way -- they do things that way -- what is to be done about it? men are beginning to feel towards justice, that resides between the endless jar of right and wrong.

Cam, Helen M.

33.

A lawyer is a gentlemen that rescues your estate from your enemies and then keeps it to himself.

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

34.

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in the courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.

Lincoln, Abraham

35.

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

36.

The only road to the highest stations in this country is that of the law.

Jones, Sir William

37.

I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their strict execution.

Grant, Ulysses S.

38.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Goldsmith, Oliver

39.

Curse on all laws, but those that love has made.

Pope, Alexander

40.

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.

Swift, Jonathan

41.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis on the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Coolidge, Calvin

42.

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.

Stirner, Max

43.

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.

Sade, Marquis De

44.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

45.

Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

46.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

47.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

Thoreau, Henry David

48.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

49.

Laws too gentle, are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

Franklin, Benjamin

50.

The magistrates are the ministers for the laws, the judges their interpreters, the rest of us are servants of the law, that we all may be free.

Cicero, Marcus T.