Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

- Proverb

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

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

Proverb, Spanish

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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

Frost, Robert

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

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

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

Lafollette, Suzanne

10.

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

Saurin, Bernard Joseph

11.

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

12.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

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

14.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

15.

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

Owen, Robert

16.

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

Becker, Ward

17.

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

18.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Brougham, Lord Henry P.

22.

The kind of lawyer you hope the other fellow has.

Chandler, Raymond

23.

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

Young, Brigham

24.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

25.

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

Wilson, Earl

26.

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

Engels, Friedrich

27.

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

Jones, Sir William

28.

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

Syrus, Publilius

29.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

30.

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

Proverb

31.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

33.

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

34.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

35.

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.

Burke, Edmund

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Gladstone, William E.

39.

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

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

41.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Johnson, Samuel

42.

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

43.

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

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.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

Frost, Robert

46.

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

Younger, Evelle

47.

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