Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Montesquieu, Charles De

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Mencken, H. L.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

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

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

Moore, Thomas

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

Proverb

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

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

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

Irving, Washington

10.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

11.

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

12.

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

Young, Brigham

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.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

18.

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

19.

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

Nizer, Louis

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

23.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

24.

He who goes to law for a sheep loses his cow.

Proverb, Spanish

25.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

26.

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

Jones, Sir William

27.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

28.

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

29.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis on the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Coolidge, Calvin

30.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

31.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

32.

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

33.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

34.

Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.

Bismarck, Otto Von

35.

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

36.

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

Mcilvanney, William

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

42.

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

Younger, Evelle

43.

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

44.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

45.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

46.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

47.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

48.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

49.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

50.

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