Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Mill, John Stuart

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

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

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

Pomerantz, Hart

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

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

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

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

Shakespeare, William

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

Engels, Friedrich

10.

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

Irving, Washington

11.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

12.

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

Halifax, Edward F.

13.

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

Proverb

14.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

15.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

16.

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

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

19.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Owen, Robert

23.

I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.

Voltaire

24.

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

25.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

Roosevelt, Theodore

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

29.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

30.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

34.

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.

35.

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.

36.

Erasmus, Desiderius

37.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

38.

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

Puzo, Mario

39.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

40.

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

41.

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

42.

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

Johnson, Samuel

43.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

44.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

45.

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