Law Quotes

The law is logical and is based on common sense. The trick was to argue the law in favor of your particular point of view without sounding biased. It was kind of like a magic trick: the best illusionist being the one who can best manipulate the logic to his or her advantage, all the while giving the illusion of impartiality.

~ Kenneth Eade

The human quest for justice is an expression of the moral content of the fundamental laws of physics, which reveals itself in the search for a supreme law and a supreme lawmaker.

~ Joseph B.h. Mcmillan

[W]hen men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil…

~ Plato

Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we're paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.''Who?' Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old nephew.'The handful of people in this town who that that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindness am I.

~ Harper Lee

Justice is not cheap in this country, and people who insist on it are usually either desperate or possessed by some private determination bordering on monomania.

~ Hunter S. Thompson

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

~ Charles Dickens

The lack of stringent laws and the inefficient prosecution ofperpetrators have made it increasingly difficult for victims and theirfamilies to get the justice they deserve.

~ Oche Otorkpa

Roache's statement after his acquittal was dignified but his supporters were angry. They demanded to know why the case was ever brought, claiming that the actor was a victim of the hysteria created by revelations about Jimmy Savile. It's a curious conclusion to draw from a not guilty verdict; there are courtrooms where the conviction rate is 100 per cent but they tend to be in totalitarian states. In serious criminal cases in England and Wales, the rate is around 82 per cent, and I would be seriously worried if every defendant were to be found guilty.The Independent, 9 February 2014

~ Joan Smith

There should be a public outcry about what happened to me and other women in the name of our government! But history has shown “the customs of society and laws of the State allowed it to crush my aspirations and barred me from the the pursuit of almost every object worthy of an intelligent, rational mind.”45 What law has the right to entrust the interest of myself and my children into the hands of such an evil bunch of men? I did not occupy my rightful place in 1976.45. (paraphrased from Gurko, Miriram, The Ladies of Seneca Falls; the Birth of the Women's Rights Movement, 1974.

~ Diane Chamberlain

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.

~ Jonathan Swift

After all, people seemed quite easy about having their rights and liberties taken away by those they looked up to, but somehow a space on the perch was a slap in the face, and treated as such.

~ Terry Pratchett

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, -a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be, -Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,As his corse to the rampart were hurried;Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

~ Henry David Thoreau

He(Prophet Muhammad) laid the foundation of a universal government. His law was one for all. Equal justice and love for everyone.

~ B. Margoliouth

Your edict, King, was strong,But all your strength is weakness itself againstThe immortal unrecorded laws of God.They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.I knew I must die, even without your decree:I am only mortal. And if I must dieNow, before it is my time to die,Surely this is no hardship: can anyoneLiving, as I live, with evil all about me,Think Death less than a friend?

~ Sophocles

Justice isn’t about fixing the past, it’s about healing the past's future.

~ Jackson Burnett

If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.

~ Amartya Sen

I urge the general public to be wary of the police on the grounds of health and safety.

~ Steven Magee

Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Miss Granger?” asked Scrimgeour.“No, I’m not,” retorted Hermione. “I’m hoping to do some good in the world!

~ J.k. Rowling

The 'Wild West' is a good description of law enforcement in the desert southwest USA.

~ Steven Magee

A law is not good merely because the legislature wills it, but the legislature has the mortal duty to will only that which is good.

~ John Howard Griffin

A good judge is not one who is impartial, but one who has prejudice for good.

~ Raheel Farooq

Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel's book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay.

~ G.i. Gurdjieff

The law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, doth revive it, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give power to subdue.

~ John Bunyan

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

~ Mark Twain

Often it takes outer authority to send us on the path to our own inner authority.

~ Richard Rohr

The majority of the common people do not realize how corrupt the legal system has become until that blatant corruption shows up at their own homes.

~ Steven Magee

If you want to routinely break the law and get away with it, then a police officer would be a great career choice for you.

~ Steven Magee

We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.

~ Hunter S. Thompson

The law is not meant to be obeyed only when it favors you and you are comfortable with it, it is also to be obeyed when it does not favor you or you're not comfortable with it.

~ Omosohwofa Casey

If you want a world ruled by law and not by force you must build up, from the very grassroots, a respect for law.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

A common and natural result of an undue respect of law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.

~ Henry David Thoreau

To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person - few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.

~ Clarence Darrow

The problem is that, when places like Saudi Arabia just implement the penal code, and don’t provide the social and economic justice of the Sharia—the whole package—they simply engender hatred toward the Sharia.

~ Anjem Choudary

We magistrates find that reason is the easiest thing in the world to dispense with; banished from our law courts as it is from our heads, we delight in trampling it underfoot, and that is what makes our judicial sentences such masterpieces, since (although commonsense never presides in them) those sentences are carried out with as much firmness as if people knew what they actually meant.

~ Marquis De Sade

I was between them, and as the tension sparked, I felt like a small rodent trapped between mastodons.

~ Phillipa Bornikova

A mosaic of memories takes me back to my own childhood, and then to my children. My earliest memory of St. Augustine was a day trip from Jacksonville; a day with some neighbors who were nice enough to purchase me a plastic toy-tugboat with a blue superstructure and white hull. Other accounts meld into my adult years. With its history and attractions, The Ancient City is pristine and picturesque by most accounts; but from the Newer Jail (not the Old Jail) , the perspective is very different.

~ H. Kirk Rainer

Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law...

~ Martin Luther

The Supreme Court of the United States is no longer a court of law. It is a forum of legal fad and fashion.

~ A.e. Samaan

There is no law, there is only conjecture. The Progressive ethos changes the law's meaning according to fad and fashion.

~ A.e. Samaan