Lawyer Quotes - Page 16

• A reputable lawyer will advise you to keep out of the law, make the best of a foolish bargain, and not get caught again.

  Mark Twain

  Law, Foolish, Caught

  Mark Twain, Hamlin Lewis Hill (1967). “Mark Twain's Letters to His Publishers, 1867-1894”, p.86, Univ of California Press

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• What do you call 500 lawyers lying on the bottom of the Ocean? A good start.

  Danny DeVito

  Funny, Sarcastic, Lying

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• Laws are inoperative in war

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Military, War, Law

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• Law, without force, is impotent.

  Blaise Pascal

  Law, Force

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• Every law is an infraction of liberty.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Funny, Humor, Law

  1789 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.

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• Law is a bottomless pit.

  John Arbuthnot

  Law, Pits

  'The History of John Bull' (1712) ch. 24

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• 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.

  Vaclav Havel

  Jobs, Law, People

  Vaclav Havel, John Keane (2016). “The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe”, p.89, Routledge

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• The law is simply expediency wearing a long white dress.

  Quentin Crisp

  Funny, Humor, Law

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• 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

  Order, Law, Giving

  1972 'Apologia', in the Harvard Law Review, Jun.

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

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Funny, Success, Humorous

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• When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

  George Eliot

  Honesty, Law, People

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• From your confessor, lawyer and doctor, hide not your case on no condition. [Is this a way of saying that honesty is the best policy?]

  John Harington

  Honesty, Doctors, Way

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• There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship-only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.

  Erica Jong

  Marriage, Broken Heart, Divorce

  Erica Jong (1995). “How to Save Your Own Life”, N A L Trade

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• If there is a regulation that says you have to do something-whether it be putting in seat belts, catalytic converters, clean air for coal plants, clean water-the first tack that the lawyers use, among others things, and that companies use, is that it's going to drive the electricity bill up, drive the cost of cars up, drive everything up. It repeatedly has been demonstrated that once the engineers start thinking about it, it's actually far less than the original estimates. We should remember that when we hear this again, because you will hear it again.

  Steven Chu

  Technology, Thinking, Air

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• Does America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million lawsuits coursing through our system annually?

  Dan Quayle

  America, Healthy, Liberty

  "Address by Quayle On Justice Proposals Irks Bar Association". Vice President Dan Quayle's address to the American Bar Association, www.nytimes.com. August 14, 1991.

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• The day was dark as a lawyer's soul.

  Stuart MacBride

  Dark, Soul

  "Cold Granite". Book by Stuart MacBride, 2005.

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• I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Clever, Truth, Science

  Douglas Hofstadter (2008). “Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern”, p.85, Hachette UK

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• In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is.

  Alfred Adler

  Friendship, Book, Science

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• If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers ... if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men.

  Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Men, Special, Trials

  "Calif. Gov not sorry for 'girlie men' remark". www.nbcnews.com. July 19, 2004.

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• Law is nothing else but the best reason of wise men applied for ages to the transactions and business of mankind.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wise, Men, Law

  Gene Griessman, Abraham Lincoln (1998). “The Words Lincoln Lived By: 52 Timeless Principles to Light Your Path”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• 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 Primmers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mother, Book, School

  Abraham Lincoln (2009). “The Portable Abraham Lincoln”, p.35, Penguin

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• When I have a particular case in hand, I have that motive and feel an interest in the case, feel an interest in ferreting out the questions to the bottom, love to dig up the question by the roots and hold it up and dry it before the fires of the mind.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Hands, Law, Roots

  Abraham Lincoln, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (1950). “The Lincoln treasury”

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• Again, a law may be both constitutional and expedient, and yet may be administered in an unjust and unfair way.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Law, Unjust, May

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.295, Fordham Univ Press

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• No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression. My conscience is my own - my creators - not man's. I shall never sink the rights of mankind to the malice, wrong, or avarice of another's wishes, though those wishes come to me in the relation of client and attorney.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Law, Rights

  Abraham Lincoln, Caroline Thomas Harnsberger (1950). “The Lincoln treasury”

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• In law it is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Law, Needs, Prove

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45”, p.177, Library of America

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