Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

Mellor, David

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

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

Engels, Friedrich

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

Keats, John

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

Stirner, Max

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.

A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.

Lippmann, Walter

11.

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

12.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

13.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

14.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

15.

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

16.

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

Younger, Evelle

17.

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

18.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

19.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

20.

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

21.

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

Voltaire

22.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

23.

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

Mcilvanney, William

24.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

28.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

29.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

30.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

31.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

32.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

33.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

34.

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.

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

38.

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

Irving, Washington

39.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

40.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

41.

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

42.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have must to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

Burke, Edmund

43.

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

Jones, Sir William

44.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

45.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

46.

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.

47.

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

Shakespeare, William

48.

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

Proverb

49.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

50.

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