Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Pomerantz, Hart

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

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

Younger, Evelle

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Jones, Sir William

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

10.

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

11.

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

Mellor, David

12.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

13.

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

Wilson, Earl

14.

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.

15.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

19.

I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their strict execution.

Grant, Ulysses S.

20.

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

21.

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

Hughes, Charles Evans

22.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

23.

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

24.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

28.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Shakespeare, William

33.

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

Epitaph

34.

Fish die when they are out of water, and people die without law and order.

Talmud, The

35.

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

36.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

37.

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.

38.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

39.

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

40.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

41.

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

Nizer, Louis

42.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

43.

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

Gladstone, William E.

44.

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

45.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

46.

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.

Stirner, Max

47.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

48.

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

49.

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

Johnson, Samuel

50.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French