Lawyer Quotes

• You are remembered for the rules you break.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Military, Bad Ass, Legacy

  226 Copy quote

• If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Law, People

  Charles Dickens (1848). “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc”, p.255

  151 Copy quote

  Show source

• The law is reason, free from passion.

  Aristotle

  Philosophical, Passion, Law

  "Politics". Book by Aristotle. Book III, 1287a.32,

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief."

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Persons, Documents

  33 Copy quote

• A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.

  Mark Twain

  Clever, Law, Lunch

  37 Copy quote

• Necessity knows no law; I know some attorneys of the same.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Funny, Law, Attorney

  James C. Humes, Benjamin Franklin (1995). “The wit and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin: a treasury of more than 900 quotations and anecdotes”, Harpercollins

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Justice is doing for others what we would want done for us.

  Gary Haugen

  Justice, Done, Want

  Twitter post from Dec 24, 2016

  85 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Men, Winning, Risk

  Patrick O'Brian (2004). “The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels”, W. W. Norton & Company

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Law, Attorney, Uncertainty

  Jeremy Bentham, John Bowring (1842). “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected”, p.429

  75 Copy quote

  Show source

• To me a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country. We're all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there's a problem, the lawyer is the only person that has actually read the inside of the top of the box.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Country, Moving, Games

  "SeinLanguage" by Jerry Seinfeld, New York: Bantam, (p. 90), 1993.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lawyers are men whom we hire to protect us from lawyers.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Men, Law, Protect

  Elbert Hubbard (1902). “Contemplations: Being Several Short Essays Helpful Sermonettes, Epigrams and Orphic Sayings”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Emma Goldman

  Law, Ideas, Wheels

  Emma Goldman “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.

  Will Rogers

  Inspiration, Law, Minutes

  "The Lawyers Talking" (1935)

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• A Lawyer will do anything to win a case, sometimes he will even tell the truth.

  Patrick Murray

  Funny, Winning, Sometimes

  19 Copy quote

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

  John Keats

  Funny, Thinking, Class

  John Keats (2009). “Selected Letters of John Keats: Revised Edition”, p.263, Harvard University Press

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

  Edmund Burke

  Law, Justice, Humanity

  "On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies," 22 Mar. 1775

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Funny, Yield, Law Students

  "Thomas Jefferson, His Words and Vision".

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Sarcastic, Law, Duty

  17 Copy quote

• People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

  Will Rogers

  Funny, Letting Go, Humorous

  Will Rogers (1992). “Will Rogers at the Ziegfeld Follies”, p.44, University of Oklahoma Press

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck. But my lawyer thinks he can get me five.

  Steven Wright

  Inspirational, Life, Thinking

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.

  Oscar Wilde

  Humor, Law, Clients

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.143, Wordsworth Editions

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Opportunity, Men, Good Man

  "Notes for a Law Lecture," ca. 1 July 1850

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Mario Puzo

  Funny, Humorous, Gun

  The Godfather ch. 1 (1969). This line does not appear in the movie version of The Godfather.

  87 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Walter Scott

  Law, History, Historical

  Guy Mannering ch. 37 (1815)

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't misinform your Doctor nor your Lawyer.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Doctors, Law Students, Attorney

  Benjamin Franklin (2007). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.27, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source