Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

- Martineau, Harriet

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

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

Diderot, Denis

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

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

Mill, John Stuart

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

10.

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

Engels, Friedrich

11.

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

12.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

13.

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

Proverb

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

17.

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

18.

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

Mcilvanney, William

19.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

20.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

21.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

22.

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

Puzo, Mario

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

26.

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

27.

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

Moore, Thomas

28.

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

Pope, Alexander

29.

Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.

Colton, Charles Caleb

30.

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

Irving, Washington

31.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

32.

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

33.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

34.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

35.

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

36.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

37.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

38.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

39.

In a democracy -- even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-?litist one -- the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.

Gordimer, Nadine

40.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.

Gladstone, William E.

44.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

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

Johnson, Samuel

46.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.

Thoreau, Henry David

47.

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.

Mille, Cecil B. De

48.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

49.

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

50.

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