Law
- I have forgotten more law than you ever knew, but allow me to say, I have not forgotten much.
-- Anon.
- America is a country where, thanks to Congress, there are 40 million laws to enforce 10 commandments.
-- Anon.
- The law is a strange thing. It makes a man swear to tell the truth, and every time he shows signs of doing so, some lawyer objects.
-- Anon.
- If you laid all our laws end to end, there would be no end.
-- Arthur 'Bugs' Baer
- A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
- Any law that takes hold of a man's daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
- Those learned in the law, when they do give advice without the usual fee, and in the confidence of friendship, generally say, "Pay, pay anything rather than go to law."
-- Isabella Beeton
- Litigant: a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bone.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.
-- Otto von Bismarck
- The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which so long as he keeps to it a citizen may walk safely.
-- Robert Bolt
- If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
-- Louis D. Brandeis
- The case has been going on for so long that I've forgotten whether I'm really innocent or guilty.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
- Our system is not one of justice, but of law.
-- Edna Buchanan
- When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.
-- Cicero
- Law and equity are two things which God hath joined, but which man hath put asunder.
-- Charles Caleb Colton
- Men would be great criminals did they need as many laws as they break.
-- Charles John Darling
- The law is above the law, you know.
-- Dorothy Salisbury Davis
- An appeal is when ye ask wan court to show its contempt for another court.
-- Finley Peter Dunne
- The law's made to take care o' raskills.
-- George Eliot
- No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- How noble the law, in its majestic equality, that both the rich and poor are equally prohibited from peeing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread!
-- Anatole France
- If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.
-- Felix Frankfurter
- A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost
- A successful lawsuit is the one worn by the policeman.
-- Robert Frost
- Law cannot persuade where it cannot punish.
-- Thomas Fuller
- The aim of law is the maximum gratification of the nervous system of man.
-- Learned Hand
- Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.
-- Herman Hesse
- Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced.
-- Elbert Hubbard
- We can not expect to breed respect for law and order among people who do not share the fruits of our freedom.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey
- It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.
-- Thomas Jefferson
- It takes a long time to learn that a courtroom is the last place in the world for learning the truth.
-- Alice Koller
- Laws are only felt when the individual comes in conflict with them.
-- Suzanne La Follette
- Every skilled person is to be believed with reference to his own art.
-- Legal Maxim
- The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.
-- Niccolò Machiavelli
- It is not possible to make a bad law. If is is bad, it is not a law.
-- Carry Nation
- Law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table.
-- Florence Nightingale
- Petty laws breed great crimes.
-- Ouida
- Where law ends, tyranny begins.
-- William Pitt
- Law school taught me one thing: how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.
-- Hart Pomerantz
- Wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
-- Alexander Pope
- The law must be stable and yet it must not stand still.
-- Roscoe Pound
- The law itself follows gold.
-- Propertius
- Our very freedom is secure because we're a nation governed by laws, not by men. We cannot as citizens pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey.
-- Ronals Reagan
- You can't legislate intelligence and common sense into people.
-- Will Rogers
- No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
- For many persons, law appears to be black magic--an obscure domain that can be fathomed only by the professional initiated into the mysteries.
-- Susan C. Ross
- It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.
-- Friedrich von Schiller
- Ignorance of the law excuses no man.
-- John Selden
- To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all laws into contempt.
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- The mills of God work like lightning compared with the law.
-- Mary Stewart
- Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but which let wasps and hornets break through.
-- Jonathan Swift
- The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.
-- Tacitus
- I can't do literary work for the rest of this year because I'm meditating another lawsuit and looking around for a defendant.
-- Mark Twain
- I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.
-- Voltaire
- It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
-- Earl Warren
- There is plenty of law at the end of a nightstick.
-- Grover A. Whalen
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