Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

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

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Cicero, Marcus T.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket: and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it.

Macklin, Charles

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

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

Shakespeare, William

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

It is unfair to believe everything we hear about lawyers, some of it might not be true.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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

Nizer, Louis

10.

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

11.

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

Owen, Robert

12.

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

La Bruyere, Jean De

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Laws are not masters, but servants, and he rules them, who obeys them.

Becker, Ward

16.

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

Puzo, Mario

17.

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

Voltaire

18.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

Fielding, Henry

19.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Goldsmith, Oliver

20.

I have enforced the law against killing certain animals and many others, but the greatest progress of righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings.

Asoka

21.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

22.

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

23.

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

Moore, Thomas

24.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

25.

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

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

28.

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

29.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

30.

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

Irving, Washington

31.

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.

32.

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

Proverb

33.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

34.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

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

Welles, Orson

36.

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

Proverb

37.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

King Jr. Martin Luther

38.

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

Jones, Sir William

39.

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

Frost, Robert

40.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

41.

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

Grant, Ulysses S.

42.

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

Gladstone, William E.

43.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

44.

The United States is the greatest law factory the world has ever known.

Hughes, Charles Evans

45.

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

46.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

47.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

48.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

49.

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