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

Montesquieu, Charles De

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

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

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

Nizer, Louis

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

Epitaph

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

The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life -- to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.

Macleish, Archibald

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

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

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

Younger, Evelle

12.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

13.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

14.

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

Mill, John Stuart

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

18.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

19.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

20.

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

21.

Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.

Sprecht, Robert D.

22.

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

23.

Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.

Kennedy, Robert F.

24.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

25.

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

Talmud, The

26.

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

27.

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

Engels, Friedrich

28.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

29.

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

Gladstone, William E.

30.

The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.

Havel, Vaclav

31.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

32.

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

Mencken, H. L.

33.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

34.

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

35.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

36.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

37.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

38.

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

39.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

40.

Laws are felt only when the individual comes into conflict with them.

Lafollette, Suzanne

41.

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

Martineau, Harriet

42.

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

Trapp, June L.

43.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

44.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

45.

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.