Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

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.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

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

Pomerantz, Hart

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

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.

10.

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

Younger, Evelle

11.

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

Mellor, David

12.

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

13.

Gordimer, Nadine

14.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

15.

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

16.

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

Proverb

17.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

18.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

19.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

20.

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

Froude, James A.

21.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

22.

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.

Mille, Cecil B. De

23.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

24.

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

25.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

26.

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

27.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

28.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

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.

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

Welles, Orson

31.

Laws too gentle, are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

Franklin, Benjamin

32.

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

Owen, Robert

33.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

35.

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

36.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

37.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

38.

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

Pope, Alexander

39.

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

Moore, Thomas

40.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

41.

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

Jones, Sir William

42.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

43.

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in the courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.

Lincoln, Abraham

44.

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

45.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

46.

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

Proverb, Spanish

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

Frost, Robert

50.

Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.

Irving, Washington