Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

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

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

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

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Jones, Sir William

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

10.

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

Trapp, June L.

11.

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

12.

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

Pope, Alexander

13.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

14.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

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.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

17.

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

18.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

19.

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

Shakespeare, William

20.

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.

21.

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

Proverb

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Wilson, Earl

26.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

27.

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

Keats, John

28.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

29.

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

Gladstone, William E.

30.

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

Young, Brigham

31.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

King Jr. Martin Luther

32.

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Frost, Robert

33.

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

Talmud, The

34.

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

Mencken, H. L.

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

37.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

39.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

40.

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

41.

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

42.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Gandhi, Mahatma

43.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

44.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

48.

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

Owen, Robert

49.

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

Diderot, Denis

50.

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