Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

Fish die when they are out of water, and people die without law and order.

Talmud, The

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

Franklin, Benjamin

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

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

10.

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

Becker, Ward

11.

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

Nizer, Louis

12.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

13.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

14.

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.

15.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Johnson, Samuel

17.

Lawyers are like rhinoceroses: thick skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge.

Mellor, David

18.

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

19.

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

Johnson, Samuel

20.

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

Mill, John Stuart

21.

Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.

Bismarck, Otto Von

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

25.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

26.

An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for years or months. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.

Younger, Evelle

27.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

28.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

29.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

30.

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

31.

A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

Butler, Samuel

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Mcilvanney, William

35.

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

36.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

37.

In a democracy -- even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-?litist one -- the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.

Gordimer, Nadine

38.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

King Jr. Martin Luther

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.

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

41.

When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.

Cervantes, Miguel De

42.

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

43.

Law school taught me one thing; how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.

Pomerantz, Hart

44.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

45.

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.

Gladstone, William E.

46.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

47.

This is a court of law young man, not a court of justice.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

48.

Anybody who thinks talk is cheap should get some legal advice.

Jones, Franklin P.

49.

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

50.

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Frost, Robert