Law Quotes

“All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.”
― Richard Lamm

“Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and—most unforgivably—increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault.”
― Norman G. Finkelstein, Goldstone Recants: Richard Goldstone Renews Israel's License to Kill

“The partisan wants to change the law, the criminal break it; the anarch wants neither. He is not for or against the law. While not acknowledging the law, he does try to recognize it like the laws of nature, and he adjusts accordingly.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Selected Works

“You know, that man has a spirit, that each man and woman is unique, that we have duty to promote our unalienable rights and to protect them, that we have a duty to our families and ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to contribute to charity, that we have a duty to support a just and righteous law that is stable and predictable.”
― Mark R. Levin

“Justice based purely on laws is about as accurate as a portrait created out of large low-resolution color pixels.

If you stand back far enough it looks good.

Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original.

Justice should be viewable under the microscope, not from a telescope.

And for that it needs to be based not on law but on truth.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Divide the constant tide and random noisiness of energetic flow, with conscious recurring moments of empty mind, solitude, gratitude and deep...slow...breathing. Of this, the natural law of self-preservation demands.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has developed with mankind... If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?”
― Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident

“I would not tell this court that I do not hope that some time, when life and age have changed their bodies, as they do, and have changed their emotions, as they do -- that they may once more return to life. I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. But what have they to look forward to? Nothing. And I think here of the stanza ofHousman:

Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are fluttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack
And leave your friends and go.
O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There’s nothing but the night.

...Here it Leopold’s father -- and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him, he cared for him, he worked for him; the boy was brilliant and accomplished, he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited.It is a hard thing for a father to see his life’s hopes crumble into dust.

...I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old.I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love.I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past... I am pleading for the future;I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.

...I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friends that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich. If I should succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that... I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.

I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet,Omar Khayyám.It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:

So I be written in the Book of Love,
I do not care about that Book above.
Erase my name or write it as you will,
So I be written in the Book of Love.”
― Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom

“I know, Ma. I'm a-tryin'. But them deputies- Did you ever see a deputy that didn't have a fat ass? An' they waggle their ass an' flop their gun aroun'. Ma", he said, "if it was the law they was workin' with, why we could take it. But it ain't the law. They're a-working away at our spirits. They're a-tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They're tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're working on our decency".”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“If laws were real they wouldn’t need to be enforced, because if they were real they couldn’t be broken. Try breaking the law of gravity. Now that’s a law. Laws made by man are rules reflecting the current status of his moral codes. As he alters and whittles away his morality, casting bits and pieces aside, his codes change to reflect it.”
― Boyd Rice, NO

“The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.”
― John Marshall

“God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Part of water which is cooler always flows to below surface.
I understand that hotheaded men always want to be noticed.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“The love of Christ is always there and unchanging, no matter what we do, but it is when we are obedient that we actually begin to feel it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.”
― William Penn

“Every lawyer shall tell his or her client that becoming involved with the legal system is like three years of experimental chemotherapy, one hundred percent guaranteed not to work.”
― Lawrence Joseph, Lawyerland: An Unguarded, Street-Level Look At Law & Lawyers Today

“All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.”
― Felix Frankfurter

“So the next day I asked Dan how is it that Bubba can get killed, and what kind of half assed nature law would allow that. He thought about it for a while, and said, 'Well, I'll tell you, Forrest, all of these laws are not specially pleasing to us. But there is laws nonetheless. Like when a tiger pounce on a monkey in the jungle - bad for the money, but good for the tiger. That is just the way it is.”
― Winston Groom, Forrest Gump

“There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return.”
― James Bamford, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

“For having been educated in a convent, she knew nothing of the customs or manners of the world; and found it difficult to understand that among a people piquing themselves on their liberty, it was the custom to shut a man up in perpetual confinement, to enable him to pay his debts.”
― Charlotte Turner Smith, Ethelinde, or the Recluse of the Lake

“Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting”
― Thomas Jefferson

“ما هو القانون ؟ هل ما يوجد في الكتب، أم يُطبق بالفعل ، ويتبعه المجتمع؟ أم أنَّ القانون هو ما يجب تطبيقه و اتباعه ، سواء كان في الكتب أو لم يكن ، وإن كانت الأمور تسير على ما يرام أما لا ؟”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Elwood said," It's against the law. "State law, but also Elwood's. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“A cop is a human creature born stupid and raised in stupidity.”
― Norman Mailer, Tough Guys Don't Dance

“Actually, Bush, technically speaking, is not really President-because he refused to take the Oath of Office. I don’t know how many of you noticed this, but the wording of the Oath of Office is written in the Constitution, so you can’t fool around with it-and Bush refused to read it. The Oath of Of­fice says something about,” I promise to do this, that, and the other thing,” and Bush added the words,” so help me God.” Well, that’s illegal: he’s not President, if anybody cares.”
― Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

“The law, or the thoroughly realistic formalization of certain conditions for the self-preservation of a community, forbids certain actions directed against the community. However, it does not forbid the disposition that produces these actions, for it needs these action for other ends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power