Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

Our human laws are more or less imperfect copies of the external laws as we see them.

- Froude, James A.

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

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

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

Young, Brigham

10.

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

Stirner, Max

11.

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

12.

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

Puzo, Mario

13.

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

Mellor, David

14.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

15.

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

16.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

17.

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

18.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

20.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

21.

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

Proverb

22.

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

23.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

24.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

25.

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

Frost, Robert

26.

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

Welles, Orson

27.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

28.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

29.

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

Trapp, June L.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

33.

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.

34.

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

Mencken, H. L.

35.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket: and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it.

Macklin, Charles

36.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

37.

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

Owen, Robert

38.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

39.

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

Epitaph

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.

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

42.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

43.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

44.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

45.

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

46.

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

Johnson, Samuel

47.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

48.

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

Moore, Thomas

49.

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