Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Thoreau, Henry David

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

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

An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for years or months. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.

Younger, Evelle

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

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

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

Proverb

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

10.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Pomerantz, Hart

14.

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

15.

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

Irving, Washington

16.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

17.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

Engels, Friedrich

18.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

22.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

23.

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

24.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

25.

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

Proverb

26.

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

Nizer, Louis

27.

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

Mill, John Stuart

28.

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

29.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

30.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

31.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

32.

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

Mille, Cecil B. De

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Mencken, H. L.

36.

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

Young, Brigham

37.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

38.

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.

39.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

43.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

44.

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

45.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

46.

The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.

Welles, Orson

47.

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

48.

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

Mellor, David

49.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

50.

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

Puzo, Mario