Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

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

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

Froude, James A.

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

Diderot, Denis

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

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.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

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

Wilson, Earl

10.

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

11.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

12.

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

13.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

14.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

15.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

16.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

17.

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.

18.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

19.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

20.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

21.

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

Mellor, David

22.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

23.

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

24.

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

Epitaph

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

Proverb, Spanish

27.

The law helps those who watch, not those who sleep.

Proverb

28.

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

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

31.

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

Trapp, June L.

32.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

33.

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

Moore, Thomas

34.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

35.

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

Nizer, Louis

36.

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

Mill, John Stuart

37.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

41.

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

Stirner, Max

42.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

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

Becker, Ward

44.

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

Owen, Robert

45.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

46.

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

47.

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

Frost, Robert

48.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

49.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

50.

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