Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Franklin, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Lincoln, Abraham

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

Wilson, Earl

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.

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

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.

Anybody who thinks talk is cheap should get some legal advice.

Jones, Franklin P.

10.

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

11.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

12.

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

Mencken, H. L.

13.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

14.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

15.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

16.

No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

Arendt, Hannah

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

21.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

22.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

23.

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

24.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

26.

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

Nizer, Louis

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.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

29.

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

Diderot, Denis

30.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Darrow, Clarence

31.

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

32.

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

Mellor, David

33.

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

Moore, Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

39.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

40.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

44.

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

45.

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

46.

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

Talmud, The

47.

Our human laws are more or less imperfect copies of the external laws as we see them.

Froude, James A.

48.

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

Young, Brigham

49.

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

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