Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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.

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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 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.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

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

Mellor, David

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

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

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

10.

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

Frost, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

Nizer, Louis

13.

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

14.

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

Voltaire

15.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

The law helps those who watch, not those who sleep.

Proverb

19.

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

20.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

21.

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

22.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

23.

Laws are felt only when the individual comes into conflict with them.

Lafollette, Suzanne

24.

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

25.

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

Irving, Washington

26.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

27.

A lawyer is a gentlemen that rescues your estate from your enemies and then keeps it to himself.

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

28.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

29.

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

Jones, Sir William

30.

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

31.

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

Mille, Cecil B. De

32.

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

Pope, Alexander

33.

Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

36.

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

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

39.

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

40.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

41.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

42.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

43.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

44.

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

Mill, John Stuart

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.

Dickens, Charles

49.

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

Owen, Robert

50.

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

Johnson, Samuel