Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Welles, Orson

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

Irving, Washington

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

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

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

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Frost, Robert

10.

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

11.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

12.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

13.

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

Young, Brigham

14.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

15.

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.

16.

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

Trapp, June L.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

21.

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

22.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

23.

God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.

Franklin, Benjamin

24.

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

Proverb

25.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

26.

Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.

Owen, Robert

27.

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

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

Welles, Orson

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Proverb, Spanish

33.

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

34.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis on the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Coolidge, Calvin

35.

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

36.

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

Diderot, Denis

37.

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

Nizer, Louis

38.

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

Younger, Evelle

39.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

40.

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

41.

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

Mellor, David

42.

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

Mill, John Stuart

43.

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

Johnson, Samuel

44.

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

Mille, Cecil B. De

45.

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

46.

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

Moore, Thomas

47.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have must to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

Burke, Edmund

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.

Gladstone, William E.

50.

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