Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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.

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.

Mille, Cecil B. De

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

More, Thomas

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

Rulers were made to be broken.

Isenberg, Michael

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

Talmud, The

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

Younger, Evelle

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

Frost, Robert

10.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

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.

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

13.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

14.

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

15.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

16.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

17.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

21.

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

Proverb

22.

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

Puzo, Mario

23.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

24.

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

25.

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

Young, Brigham

26.

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

27.

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

Jones, Sir William

28.

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

Moore, Thomas

29.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

30.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

31.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

36.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

37.

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

38.

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

Gladstone, William E.

39.

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

Keats, John

40.

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

Saying

41.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

42.

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

43.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Montesquieu, Charles De

44.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

46.

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.