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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

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

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

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

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

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

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

Moore, Thomas

10.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

14.

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

15.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

16.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

17.

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

18.

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

Keats, John

19.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

21.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

22.

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

Voltaire

23.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

24.

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

Becker, Ward

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

30.

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

31.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

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

Irving, Washington

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

36.

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

Frost, Robert

37.

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

Mcilvanney, William

38.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

39.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

40.

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

Mill, John Stuart

41.

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

Puzo, Mario

42.

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

Mencken, H. L.

43.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

44.

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

45.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

46.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

47.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

48.

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