Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Mcilvanney, William

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

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

Pomerantz, Hart

Fish die when they are out of water, and people die without law and order.

Talmud, The

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

Halifax, Edward F.

Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.

Sprecht, Robert D.

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

Keats, John

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

10.

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

Becker, Ward

11.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

15.

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

16.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

17.

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

Proverb

18.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

19.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

20.

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

Irving, Washington

21.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

22.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

23.

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

Engels, Friedrich

24.

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

25.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

26.

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

Welles, Orson

27.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

28.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

29.

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

30.

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

Froude, James A.

31.

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

32.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

33.

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

34.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

35.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

36.

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

Shakespeare, William

37.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

38.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

39.

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

Jones, Sir William

40.

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

41.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Johnson, Samuel

46.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

47.

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

48.

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

49.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

50.

A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

Butler, Samuel