Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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.

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

Lincoln, Abraham

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

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

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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

Mencken, H. L.

10.

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

Maxwell, James Clerk

11.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

12.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

13.

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

Frost, Robert

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

17.

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

Irving, Washington

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.

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

20.

God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.

Franklin, Benjamin

21.

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

22.

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

23.

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law.

Sutrakritanga

24.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

25.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

26.

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

Froude, James A.

27.

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

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Pomerantz, Hart

30.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

31.

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

Mill, John Stuart

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

Nizer, Louis

37.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

38.

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

Wilson, Earl

39.

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

Proverb, Spanish

40.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

41.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

42.

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

Engels, Friedrich

43.

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

Jones, Sir William

44.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

45.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

46.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Goldsmith, Oliver

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

50.

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

Younger, Evelle