Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

- Bacon, Francis

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.

Franklin, Benjamin

A judge is a law student who grades his own papers.

Mencken, H. L.

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 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

It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour.

Jefferson, Thomas

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

Maxwell, James Clerk

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

Jones, Sir William

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

Goldman, Emma

10.

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.

11.

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed.

Ostman, Virginia

12.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

13.

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

Engels, Friedrich

14.

Here lies one believe it if you can, who thought an attorney, was a honest man.

Epitaph

15.

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

16.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

17.

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

19.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

20.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

21.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

22.

We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

23.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

24.

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

Stirner, Max

25.

Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice.

Mcilvanney, William

26.

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

27.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

28.

I want to live perfectly above the law, and make it my servant instead of my master.

Young, Brigham

29.

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

30.

The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

Montesquieu, Charles De

31.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

32.

In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

33.

We should have learnt by now that laws and court decisions can only point the way. They can establish criteria of right and wrong. And they can provide a basis for rooting out the evils of bigotry and racism. But they cannot wipe away centuries of oppression and injustice -- however much we might desire it.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

34.

A jury too often has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor.

Lincoln, Abraham

35.

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Bacon, Francis

36.

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.

Chandler, Raymond

37.

We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity.

Duncan, Isadora

38.

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

39.

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

40.

He who goes to law for a sheep loses his cow.

Proverb, Spanish

41.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

42.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Gandhi, Mahatma

43.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

44.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

45.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

46.

I have enforced the law against killing certain animals and many others, but the greatest progress of righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings.

Asoka

47.

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

Diderot, Denis

48.

Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.

Colton, Charles Caleb

49.

Lawyers and painters can soon make what's black, white.

Proverb

50.

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