Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Lincoln, Abraham

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

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

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

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

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

Frost, Robert

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.

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

Diderot, Denis

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

Pope, Alexander

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

10.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

11.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

12.

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

Pomerantz, Hart

13.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

14.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

15.

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

Younger, Evelle

16.

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

Mill, John Stuart

17.

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.

18.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

19.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

20.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

21.

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

22.

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

Engels, Friedrich

23.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

24.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

25.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

26.

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

27.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

28.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

29.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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

31.

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

Stirner, Max

32.

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

33.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

34.

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

35.

Anybody who thinks talk is cheap should get some legal advice.

Jones, Franklin P.

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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

Epitaph

38.

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

39.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

40.

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

Johnson, Samuel

41.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

42.

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

Welles, Orson

43.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

44.

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

45.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

46.

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.

47.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

48.

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

49.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

50.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson