Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Halifax, Edward F.

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Becker, Ward

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

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

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

Epitaph

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

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

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

10.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

11.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

12.

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

Wilson, Earl

13.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

14.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

15.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

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.

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

Proverb, Spanish

18.

No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

Arendt, Hannah

19.

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

20.

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

21.

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

Eliot, George

22.

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

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

Frost, Robert

25.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

26.

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

Froude, James A.

27.

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

28.

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

Mcilvanney, William

29.

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

30.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

31.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Puzo, Mario

35.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

36.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

37.

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

Bismarck, Otto Von

38.

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

39.

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

Engels, Friedrich

40.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

41.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

42.

The first thing we do, lets kill the lawyers. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

43.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

46.

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

Jones, Sir William

47.

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

48.

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

Johnson, Samuel

49.

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

Voltaire

50.

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