Quotes about Lawyers

I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, two useless men are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress.

The lay litigant enters a temple of mysteries whose ceremonies are dark, complex and unfathomable. Pretrial procedures are the cabalistic rituals of the lawyers and judges who serve as priests and high priests. The layman knows nothing of their tactical significance. He knows only that his case remains in limbo while the priests and high priests chant their length and arcane pretrial rites.

“The law is not the private property of lawyers, nor is justice the exclusive province of judges and juries. In the final analysis, true justice is not a matter of courts and law books, but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect.”

Winston Churchill, for his part, regarded Gandhi with not a little contempt, describing the 'Mahatma' as a dangerous charlatan: "It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice regal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of King-Emperor."

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Turn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet; for a poet is worse, more servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named.

If it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need them.

A lawyer is someone willing to spend every cent you own to prove he's right.

The great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly emunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in the country of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their efficacy.

Stella: I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away. . . . I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: 'Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father.' And the Judge says, 'Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in. . . .'

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

Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself. Thus sin is intensified weakness or intensified defiance: sin is the intensification of despair. The emphasis is on before God, or with a conception of God; it is the conception of God that makes sin dialectically, ethically, and religiously what lawyers call 'aggravated' despair.

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.

They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

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

Our wrangling lawyers . . . are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter, - some of them in hell.

The antithesis of democracy is class dictatorship, whether by groups of bankers, investors, managers, politicians, lawyers or union members. Over a considerable part of the world the unspeakable doctrine is being preached that the ideal of a democratic State is a snare and a delusion. A politician if he denies the existence of the essentials of democracy and denies it in such a way as to create class feeling, is not working in the interest of democracy even though he protests to the high heavens that that is his objective.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

Ever negotiate with lawyers at a huge company? If they saw you drowning 100 feet from the shore, they'd through you a 51-foot rope and say they went more than halfway.

When lawyers take what they would give And doctors give what they would take.

I say get an education. Become an electrician, a mechanic, a doctor, a lawyer - anything but a fighter. In this trade, it's the managers that make the money and last the longest.

"In my youth," said his father, "I look to the law,
  And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw
  Has lasted the rest of my life."

I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.

Josiah Quincy, one-time mayor of Boston and president of Harvard University, recalled: "I will repeat an anecdote which I think Daniel Webster gave at a dinner, though, as I made no note of it, it is just possible that he told it in my presence at some later date. The conversation was running upon the importance of doing small things thoroughly and with the full measure of one's ability. This Webster illustrated by an account of some petty insurance case that was brought to him when a young lawyer in Portsmouth. Only a small amount was involved, and a twenty-dollar fee was all that was promised. "He saw that, to do his clients full justice, a journey to Boston, to consult the law library, would be desirable. He would be out of pocket by such an expedition, and for his time he would receive no adequate compensation. After a little hesitation he determined to do his very best, cost cost what it might. He accordingly went to Boston looked up the authorities, and gained the case. "Years after this, Webster, then famous, was passing through New York City. An important insurance case was to be tried the day after his arrival, and one of the counsel had been suddenly taken ill. Money was no object, and Webster was begged to name his terms and conduct the case. " 'I told them,' Mr. Webster, 'that it was preposterous to prepare a legal argument at a few hours' notice. They insisted, however, that I should look at the papers; and this after some demur, I consented to do. Well, it was my old twenty-dollar case over again, and as I never forget anything, I had all the authorities at my fingers' ends. The Court knew that I had no time to prepare, and was astonished at the range of my acquirements. So, you see, I was handsomely paid both in fame and money for that journey to Boston; and the moral is that good work is rewarded in the end, though, to be sure, one's self-approval should be enough.'"

Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.

Laws are only words, words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.

A fox may steal your hens, sir . . . . If lawyer's hand is fee'd, sir He steals your whole estate.

The charge is prepar'd, the lawyers are met, The judges all ranged,-a terrible show!

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

A Seattle lawyer once interrupted his lengthy cross-examination of a witness and exclaimed, "Your Honor, one of the jurors is asleep." "You put him to sleep," replied the judge. "Suppose you wake him up."