Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

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.

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

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

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

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

Irving, Washington

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

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

10.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

11.

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

12.

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

Mille, Cecil B. De

13.

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

Proverb

14.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

15.

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.

16.

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.

17.

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

Frost, Robert

18.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

19.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

20.

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

21.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

22.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

23.

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

Nizer, Louis

24.

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

25.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

26.

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

27.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

28.

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

Proverb

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

31.

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

32.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

33.

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

34.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

35.

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

36.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

37.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

38.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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.

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

Jones, Sir William

41.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

42.

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

43.

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

Pomerantz, Hart

44.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

50.

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