Motivational Quotes

Law and lawyers

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

Best Quotes about Law and lawyers

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

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

Proverb

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

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

Sprecht, Robert D.

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

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.

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

Diderot, Denis

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.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

10.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

11.

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

Mill, John Stuart

12.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Pascal, Blaise

13.

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

Tucker, Benjamin Ricketson

14.

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

Proverb

15.

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

Gandhi, Mahatma

16.

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

17.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Butler, Samuel

18.

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

19.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

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.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

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

Engels, Friedrich

24.

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

25.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

26.

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

27.

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

Mellor, David

28.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

Montesquieu, Charles De

29.

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

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

30.

Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice.

Mcilvanney, William

31.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

32.

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

Johnson, Samuel

33.

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.

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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

Irving, Washington

35.

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.

36.

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

Moore, Thomas

37.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

Louis XIV

41.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

Proverb, French

42.

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

Trapp, June L.

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.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Aristotle

46.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis on the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Coolidge, Calvin

47.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

48.

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

49.

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

Mencken, H. L.

50.

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