Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

- Montesquieu, Charles De

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.

Owen, Robert

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

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

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

Shakespeare, William

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

10.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

11.

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

12.

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

Froude, James A.

13.

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

Moore, Thomas

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

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

18.

I want to live perfectly above the law, and make it my servant instead of my master.

Young, Brigham

19.

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

Pope, Alexander

20.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

21.

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

Welles, Orson

22.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

23.

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

24.

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

Mencken, H. L.

25.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

26.

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

27.

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

28.

In cross examination, as in fishing, nothing is more ungainly than a fisherman pulled into the water by his catch.

Nizer, Louis

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Mcilvanney, William

33.

Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.

Erasmus, Desiderius

34.

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

35.

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

Epitaph

36.

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

37.

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

Keats, John

38.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

39.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

40.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

41.

Somebody figured it out -- we have 35 million laws trying to enforce Ten Commandments.

Wilson, Earl

42.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

43.

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

Pomerantz, Hart

44.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

Roosevelt, Theodore

45.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

46.

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

Gladstone, William E.

47.

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

Diderot, Denis

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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