Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

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

Owen, Robert

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

Crisp, Quentin

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

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

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

10.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

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.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

17.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

18.

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

Proverb, Spanish

19.

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

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

22.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

23.

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

24.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

25.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

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.

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

Proverb

28.

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

Frost, Robert

29.

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

Puzo, Mario

30.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

31.

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

Diderot, Denis

32.

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

Proverb

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

37.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

38.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Gandhi, Mahatma

39.

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

40.

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

41.

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

Irving, Washington

42.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

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

44.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

45.

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

Mill, John Stuart

46.

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

47.

Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

La Bruyere, Jean De

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.