Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Nizer, Louis

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

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.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

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

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

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

Engels, Friedrich

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

Trapp, June L.

10.

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

11.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Johnson, Samuel

12.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

13.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

14.

Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.

Kennedy, Robert F.

15.

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

Jones, Sir William

16.

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

Owen, Robert

17.

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

18.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

19.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

20.

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

Irving, Washington

21.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

22.

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law.

Sutrakritanga

23.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

24.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

25.

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

Talmud, The

26.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

27.

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.

28.

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.

29.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

30.

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

31.

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

It is unfair to believe everything we hear about lawyers, some of it might not be true.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.

Thoreau, Henry David

42.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

43.

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

Mencken, H. L.

44.

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

Pope, Alexander

45.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

46.

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

47.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

49.

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

50.

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

Wilson, Earl