Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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

Nizer, Louis

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

The first thing we do, lets kill the lawyers. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William

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

Young, Brigham

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

10.

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

Younger, Evelle

11.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

12.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

13.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

14.

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

Irving, Washington

15.

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

Proverb

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Laws too gentle, are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

Franklin, Benjamin

23.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

24.

I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.

Moore, Thomas

25.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

26.

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

Jones, Sir William

27.

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

28.

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law.

Sutrakritanga

29.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

30.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

31.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Johnson, Samuel

35.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

36.

He who goes to law for a sheep loses his cow.

Proverb, Spanish

37.

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

38.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

39.

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

40.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

41.

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

Mellor, David

42.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

43.

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

Proverb

44.

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.

45.

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

Epitaph

46.

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

Mill, John Stuart

47.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

48.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

King Jr. Martin Luther

49.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

50.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.