Quotes About Lawyers

I have a couple of trailing threads involving quotes and I am adding this one on quotes about lawyers, by lawyers about the law, or just about the law in general.  This isn't really intended to do anything more than list these quotes.

I note this as, in reading this, I'm surprised by how many of these quotes are pretty negative.  I suppose, however, that this should be no surprise, as many people's experiences with the law are negative, and therefore we'd suppose the quotes to be negative in general as well, quite often.  The law exists to deal with problems, and that's what all lawyers do, in one fashion or another.  Problems are problems, and generally, people are discontented with their problems, and anyone surrounded with them.

Note, this was at one time its own thread, but has been moved to being a separate page.

_________________________________________________________________________________

I'd rather be a ballplayer than a Justice in the United States Supreme Court.
Moe Berg

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Robert Bolt; A Man for All Seasons.

The law is an ass.
Charles Dickens


A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
Benjamin Franklin
David Frost
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., on his son's plans to attend law school
Elbert Hubbard
Thomas Jefferson
Edward Packard, Jr.
Will Rogers
Shakespeare, King Henry VI
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian Author
Spanish Proverb
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Voltaire

I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character.
Woodrow Wilson

After twenty-five years' observation, I can give it as the condensed history of most, if not all, good lawyers, that they lived well and died poor.
Daniel Webster





This is what has to be remembered about the law; beneath that cold, harsh, impersonal exterior beats a cold, harsh, impersonal heart.

When lawyers take what they would give
And doctors give what they would take.    
Oliver Wendell Holmes

What's the use of that, Wendell, a lawyer can't be a great man!

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

When dictators and tyrants seek to destroy the freedoms of men, their first target is the legal profession and through it the rule of law.
Leon Jaworski

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

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

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.   
Charles Lamb

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
Charles Lamb

A lawyer's time is his stock and trade.
Abraham Lincoln
This statement by Lincoln is frequently quoted by lawyers, and remains as true today as when he stated.  Lawyers often charge by the hour, as their time is their stock and trade.  This makes perfect sense, but it's a fact that is oddly resented by many who require a lawyers services.  

Tom Doniphon: I know those law books mean alot to you, but not out here. Out here a man settles his own problems.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

He's a lawyer.  An officer of the Court. But ah. . . what kind of lawyer?
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 

Be reconciled with your adversary quickly, while you are still on the way with him, lest perhaps the adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you will be thrown in prison.
Matthew.  5:25 

 Then Jesus spoke to the crowds, and to his disciples saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have sat down in the chair of Moses. Therefore, all things whatsoever that they shall say to you, observe and do. Yet truly, do not choose to act according to their works. For they say, but they do not do. For they bind up heavy and unbearable burdens, and they impose them on men’s shoulders. But they are not willing to move them with even a finger of their own. Truly, they do all their works so that they may be seen by men. For they enlarge their phylacteries and glorify their hems.  And they love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues, and greetings in the marketplace, and to be called Master by men. But you must not be called Master. For One is your Master, and you are all brothers. And do not choose to call anyone on earth your father. For One is your Father, who is in heaven. Neither should you be called teachers. For One is your Teacher, the Christ. Whoever is greater among you shall be your minister. But whoever has exalted himself, shall be humbled. And whoever has humbled himself, shall be exalted. So then: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you close the kingdom of heaven before men. For you yourselves do not enter, and those who are entering, you would not permit to enter. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you consume the houses of widows, praying long prayers. Because of this, you shall receive the greater judgment. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you travel around by sea and by land, in order to make one convert. And when he has been converted, you make him twice the son of Hell that you are yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say: ‘Whoever will have sworn by the temple, it is nothing. But whoever will have sworn by the gold of the temple is obligated.’ You are foolish and blind! For which is greater: the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And you say: ‘Whoever will have sworn by the altar, it is nothing. But whoever will have sworn by the gift that is on the altar is obligated.’ How blind you are! For which is greater: the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore, whoever swears by the altar, swears by it, and by all that is on it. And whoever will have sworn by the temple, swears by it, and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you collect tithes on mint and dill and cumin, but you have abandoned the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, while not omitting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat, while swallowing a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you clean what is outside the cup and the dish, but on the inside you are full of avarice and impurity. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the dish, and then what is outside becomes clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed sepulchers, which outwardly appear brilliant to men, yet truly, inside, they are filled with the bones of the dead and with all filth. So also, you certainly appear to men outwardly to be just. But inwardly you are filled with hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, who build the sepulchers of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the just. And then you say, ‘If we had been there in the days of our fathers, we would not have joined with them in the blood of the prophets.’ And so you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets. Complete, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers! How will you escape from the judgment of Hell? For this reason, behold, I send to you prophets and wisemen, and scribes. And some of these you will put to death and crucify; and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall all the blood of the just, which has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar. Amen I say to you, all these things shall fall upon this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those who have been sent to you. How often I have wanted to gather your children together, in the way that a hen gathers her young under her wings. But you were not willing!Behold, your house shall be abandoned to you, having been deserted. For I say to you, you shall not see me again, until you say: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”
Matthew 23 
Scribes were a type of lawyer, scholars of the law.

Law students are trained in the case method, and to the lawyer everything in life looks like a case.

Col. G. Stonehill: I'll take it up with my attorney.
Mattie Ross: And I will take it up with mine - Lawyer Daggett. And he will make money and I will make money and your lawyer will make money... and you, Mr. Licensed Auctioneer, you will foot the bill.
Charles Portis:  True Grit
This quote is from the 1969 version of this film which fares poorly in comparison to the 2010 version, in my view.  This quote, however, is close to the one in the 2013 version. The 2013 version and the book, have several other great quotes along these lines which I'd add, if I had them handy.

At any rate, this is one of my favorite quotes here, as this is really true. Very often people threaten to take things to their lawyers, even when dealing with a lawyer, not realizing that what is described above is exactly what stands to occur.

Mattie Ross: Do you need a good lawyer?
Ned Pepper: I need a good judge!
Charles Portis, True Grit

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

Personally, I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislature. You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of a conscience is what makes him a lawyer.
  
A man who never graduated from school might steal from a freight car. But a man who attends college and graduates as a lawyer might steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt

Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?   
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V., Sc 1.

 To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’t is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,—’t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there ’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there ’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
Shakespeare, Hamlet

Do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
William Shakespeare

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
This line by Shakespeare is frequently quoted, but rarely understood. Like Polonious "never a lender or a borrower be" line in Hamlet, this line is spoken by a foolish character and is not meant an admirable sentiment. 

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.
This is one of the more profound modern quotes about the law, and stands in stark contrast to the often quoted line about our society being a "nation of laws, not men."  

 It is better to be a mouse in a cat's mouth than a man in a lawyer's hands.

Law is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair ship.
Adlai Stevenson

They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.

If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.

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

No comments: