Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

- Syrus, Publilius

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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.

A jury too often has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor.

Lincoln, Abraham

It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

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

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

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

10.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

14.

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

15.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

Maxwell, James Clerk

19.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

20.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

21.

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

22.

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

Proverb

23.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

24.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

25.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

30.

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

Pope, Alexander

31.

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.

32.

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

Becker, Ward

33.

In a democracy -- even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-?litist one -- the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.

Gordimer, Nadine

34.

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

35.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

36.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

37.

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

Epitaph

38.

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

39.

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

Wilson, Earl

40.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

41.

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

Keats, John

42.

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

43.

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

Diderot, Denis

44.

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.

45.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

46.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

47.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

48.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

49.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

50.

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