Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Gordimer, Nadine

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

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

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

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

Welles, Orson

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

Thoreau, Henry David

10.

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.

11.

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

12.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

17.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

18.

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

19.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

20.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

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.

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

23.

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

Younger, Evelle

24.

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

Nizer, Louis

25.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Ouida

26.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

27.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

28.

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

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

31.

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.

Brecht, Bertolt

32.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

33.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

34.

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

35.

Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.

Azarias

36.

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

Froude, James A.

37.

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

38.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

Mizner, Addison

39.

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

Engels, Friedrich

40.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

41.

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

Mellor, David

42.

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

Proverb

43.

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

Talmud, The

44.

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

Kennedy, Robert F.

45.

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

Proverb, Spanish

46.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

47.

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

Mill, John Stuart

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.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

50.

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.