Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.

- Capote, Truman

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

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

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

Younger, Evelle

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

Puzo, Mario

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

Nizer, Louis

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

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

Pomerantz, Hart

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

10.

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

11.

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

Trapp, June L.

12.

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

13.

Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.

Owen, Robert

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

17.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

18.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

19.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

20.

Somebody figured it out -- we have 35 million laws trying to enforce Ten Commandments.

Wilson, Earl

21.

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

Pope, Alexander

22.

A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.

Lippmann, Walter

23.

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

Mcilvanney, William

24.

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.

25.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

26.

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

Mill, John Stuart

27.

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

28.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

29.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Proverb

33.

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

Johnson, Samuel

34.

I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.

Moore, Thomas

35.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

36.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

41.

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

Voltaire

42.

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

43.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

44.

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.

45.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

46.

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

47.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

48.

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