Quotes about law-and-lawyers

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.

— Archibald Macleish

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

— Harriet Martineau

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

— James Clerk Maxwell

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

— William Mcilvanney

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

— David Mellor

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

— H. L. Mencken

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

— H. L. Mencken

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

— John Stuart Mill

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

— Cecil B. De Mille

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

— Addison Mizner

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

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

— Charles De Montesquieu

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principles of fear or reason, but from passion.

— Charles De Montesquieu

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

— Charles De Montesquieu

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

— Charles De Montesquieu

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

— Thomas Moore

Lawyers -- a profession it is to disguise matters.

— Thomas More

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

— Louis Nizer

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.

— Virginia Ostman

Petty laws breed great crimes.

— Ouida

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

— Robert Owen

Law, without force, is impotent.

— Blaise Pascal

Law school taught me one thing; how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.

— Hart Pomerantz

Curse on all laws, but those that love has made.

— Alexander Pope

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

— Proverb

The more laws the less justice.

— Proverb

Where the law is uncertain there is no law.

— Proverb

Lawyers and woodpeckers have long bills.

— Proverb

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

— Proverb

Fools and obstinate men make lawyers rich.

— Proverb

Possession is nine tenths of the law.

— Proverb

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

— French Proverb

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

— Spanish Proverb

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

— Mario Puzo

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

— Henry M. Robert

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

— Theodore Roosevelt

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.

— Marquis De Sade

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.

— Marquis De Sade

The law often permits what honor prohibits.

— Bernard Joseph Saurin

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.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

Law cannot persuade when it cannot punish.

— Saying

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.

— Sir Walter Scott

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

— William Shakespeare

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

— George Bernard Shaw

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.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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

— Herbert Spencer

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

— Robert D. Sprecht

Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws

— Konstantin Stanislavisky

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

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.

— Max Stirner

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

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.

— Jonathan Swift

The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.

— Publilius Syrus

In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.

— Publius Cornelius Tacitus

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

— Publius Cornelius Tacitus

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

— The Talmud

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

— Hunter S. Thompson

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

— Henry David Thoreau

I say, break the law.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Alexis De Tocqueville

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.

— Alexis De Tocqueville

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

— June L. Trapp

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

— Benjamin Ricketson Tucker

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

— Mark Twain

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.

— Mark Twain

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

— Voltaire

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

— Orson Welles

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

— Earl Wilson

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

— Brigham Young

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

— Evelle Younger