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

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

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.

Stirner, Max

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

Wilson, Earl

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

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

Epitaph

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

12.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

13.

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

Mcilvanney, William

14.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

15.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

16.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

17.

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

18.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

19.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

20.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

21.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

22.

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

Halifax, Edward F.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Laws are not masters, but servants, and he rules them, who obeys them.

Becker, Ward

26.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

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

Jones, Sir William

30.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Proverb

37.

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

Johnson, Samuel

38.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

39.

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

Keats, John

40.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

41.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

42.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.

Puzo, Mario

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

Law school taught me one thing; how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.

Pomerantz, Hart

48.

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

Mellor, David

49.

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

50.

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