Famous Law Quotes

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Show your legal prowees and get the best legal quotations that can help build or improve your law vacabulary.


1. "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." ~ Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice


2. "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. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor." ~ Theodore Roosevelt


3. "Law too gentle are seldom obeyed; to severe, seldom executed." ~ Benjamin Franklin


4. "Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation." ~ Alexander Hamilton


5. "I think the first duty of society is justice." ~ Alexander Hamilton


6. "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser -- in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough." ~ Abraham Lincoln


7. "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


8. "Pretty much all law consists in forbidding men to do something that they want to do." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Supreme Court Justice


9. "Common sense often makes a good law." ~ William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice


10. "How many times have I laughed at you telling me plainly that I was too lazy to be anything but a lawyer." ~ Abraham Lincoln


11. "It usually takes 100 years to make a law, and then, after it's done its work, it usually takes 100 years to be rid of it." ~ Henry Ward Beecher


12. "Good men must not obey the laws too well." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


13. "If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end." ~ Mark Twain


14. "A reputable lawyer will advise you to keep out of the law, make the best of a foolish bargain, and not get caught again." ~ Mark Twain


15. "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice


16. "Behind every argument is someone's ignorance." ~ Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice


17. "Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done." ~ Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice


18. "If we desire respect for the law we must first make the law respectable." ~ Louis D. Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice


19. "When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free." ~ Charles Evans Hughes, Supreme Court Justice


20. "War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals." ~ Charles Evans Hughes, Supreme Court Justice


21. "Men do not die from overwork. They die from dissipation and worry." ~ Charles Evans Hughes, Supreme Court Justice


22. "Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence." ~ Joseph Story, Supreme Court Justice


23. "By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority." ~ John Roberts, Supreme Court Justice


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24. "If children do not understand the Constitution, they cannot understand how our government functions, or what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the United States." ~ John Roberts, Supreme Court Justice


25. "Trivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on." ~ John Roberts, Supreme Court Justice


26. "We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation." ~ Sandra Day O'Connor, Supreme Court Justice


27. "The courts of this country should not be the places where resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried." ~ Sandra Day O'Connor, Supreme Court Justice


28. "Commitment to the rule of law provides a basic assurance that people can know what to expect whether what they do is popular or unpopular at the time." ~ Sandra Day O'Connor, Supreme Court Justice


29. "The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected." ~ William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice


30. "Go to law for a sheep and lose your cow." ~ German proverb


31. "A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch." ~ Mark Twain


32. "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." ~ Honoré de Balzac


33. "Only a Free and Unrestrained Press can effectively expose deception in government." ~ Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice


34. "The Press was to serve the governed, not the governors." ~ Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice


35. "The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a Free and Unrestrained Press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a Free Press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people." ~ Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice


36. "I read the Washington Post and the New York Times every day, and I think that the reporters are trying to tell the public the way things are." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice


37. "The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people." ~ Elena Kagan, Supreme Court Justice


38. "The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law." ~ Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice


39. "If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers." ~ Charles Dickens


40. "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." ~ John Adams


41. "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." ~ Martin Luther King


42. "Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress." ~ Martin Luther King


43. "If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones." ~ Voltaire


44. "I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one." ~ Voltaire


45. "Law practice is the exact opposite of sex: even when it's good, it's bad." ~ Mortimer Zuckerman


46. "...the Constitution will endure as a vital charter of human liberty as long as there are those with the courage to defend it, the vision to interpret it, and the fidelity to live by it." ~ William J. Brennan Jr., Supreme Court Justice



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47. "…debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open and it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." ~ William J. Brennan Jr., Supreme Court Justice


48. "One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric." ~ John Marshall Harlan II, Supreme Court Justice


49. "Independence doesn't mean you decide the way you want." ~ Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court Justice


50. "Independence means you decide according to the law and the facts." ~ Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court Justice


51. "There are loads of countries that have nice written constitutions like ours. But there aren't loads of countries where they're followed." ~ Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court Justice


52. "Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law." ~ Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice


53. "The only people who have quick answers don't have the responsibility of making the decisions." ~ Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice


54. "It takes a person with a mission to succeed." ~ Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice


55. "You didn't think of angels as white or black. They were angels." ~ Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice


56. "Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice


57. "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice


58. "Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice


59. "The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice


60. "The Constitution doesn't belong to a bunch of judges and lawyers. It belongs to you." ~ Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice


61. "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor." ~ ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice


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62. "And it is no less true, that personal security and private property rest entirely upon the wisdom, the stability, and the integrity of the courts of justice." ~ Joseph Story, Supreme Court Justice


63. "The aim of the law is not to punish sins, but is to prevent certain external results." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice


64. "In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute." ~ Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court Justice


65. "The people's good is the highest law." ~ Cicero, Roman politician and lawyer


66. "When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff." ~ Cicero, Roman politician and lawyer


67. "Law is the wisdom of the ages wrapped in the opinion of the moment." ~ Drop Dead Diva, TV Series (2009 - 2015)


68. "If the law against you, bang on the facts. If the facts against you, bang on the law. If both against you, bang on a table." ~ Drop Dead Diva, TV Series (2009 - 2015)


69. "Justice delayed, is justice denied." ~ William E. Gladston


70. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." ~ William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2


71. "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been EXPERIENCE." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court Justice


72. "INTEGRITY is the key to understanding legal practice. Law's empire is defined by attitude, not territory or power or process." ~ Ronald Dworkin


73. "It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive." ~ Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States


74. "I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures." ~ Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States


75. "I hate banks. They do nothing positive for anybody except take care of themselves. They're first in with their fees and first out when there's trouble." ~ Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States


76. "The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself." ~ Charles Dickens


77. "When a judge sits in judgment over a fellow man, he should feel as if a sword is pointed at his own heart." ~ Talmud


78. "The judge answers questions of law; the jury answers questions of fact." ~ Latin saying


79. "The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind." ~ Abraham Lincoln


80. "One of the most solemn responsibilities of the president--and it's set out expressly in the Constitution--is that the president is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and that means the Constitution. It means statutes. It means treaties. It means all of the laws of the United States." ~ Samuel Alito, Supreme Court Justice


81. "A judge can't have any preferred outcome in any particular case. The judge's only obligation - and it's a solemn obligation - is to the rule of law." ~ Samuel Alito, Supreme Court Justice


82. "I think that the legitimacy of the court would be undermined in any case if the court made a decision based on its perception of public opinion." ~ Samuel Alito, Supreme Court Justice


83. "The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth." ~ Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice


84. "Everyone is presumed good, and in doubtful cases the resolution should be for the accused." ~ Roman Law, c. 500 B.C.


85. "Know ye the truth and the truth will set us free." ~ Book of John, 8:32


86. "Where law ends, tyranny begins." ~ William Pitt, British Statesman, 18th Century


87. "Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people." ~ William Blackstone


88. "Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr


89. "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." ~ 19th century proverb


90. "Remember always that all of us…are descended from immigrants and revolutionists." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt


91. "A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations…is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism." ~ Abraham Lincoln


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