Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

- Montesquieu, Charles De

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

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

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

Trapp, June L.

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

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

10.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

11.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

12.

I have enforced the law against killing certain animals and many others, but the greatest progress of righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings.

Asoka

13.

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

14.

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

Mille, Cecil B. De

15.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

16.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

17.

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

Shakespeare, William

18.

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

Irving, Washington

19.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

20.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

21.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

22.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

Thoreau, Henry David

23.

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

24.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

25.

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

26.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

27.

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.

28.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

29.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principles of fear or reason, but from passion.

Montesquieu, Charles De

30.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

31.

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

Bismarck, Otto Von

32.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

33.

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.

34.

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

Younger, Evelle

35.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

36.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

38.

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

Mcilvanney, William

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

42.

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

43.

Lawyers are like rhinoceroses: thick skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge.

Mellor, David

44.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

45.

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

Epitaph

46.

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

Froude, James A.

47.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

48.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

49.

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

50.

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

Franklin, Benjamin