Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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

Jones, Sir William

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

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

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

10.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

11.

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

12.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

13.

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

14.

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

15.

The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life -- to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.

Macleish, Archibald

16.

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

Mcilvanney, William

17.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

18.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

19.

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

20.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

21.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

22.

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.

23.

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

Bismarck, Otto Von

24.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

25.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

26.

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

27.

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

Proverb

28.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

29.

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

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

32.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

33.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

34.

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

Epitaph

35.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

36.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

37.

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

38.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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.

40.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

41.

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

42.

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

Becker, Ward

43.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

44.

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

Mencken, H. L.

45.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

46.

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

Froude, James A.

47.

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

48.

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

Mill, John Stuart

49.

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

Young, Brigham

50.

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

Pomerantz, Hart