Lawyers Quotes

“It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
― Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
― George R.R. Martin, Ace in the Hole

“The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer. ”
― Will Rogers

“We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“[Hazel] hissed in frustration. 'I hate eidolons. I thought Piper made them promise to stay away.'
'Oh...' Frank said, like he'd just had his own daily happy thought. 'Piper made them promise to stay off the ship and not possess any of us. But if they followed us, and used other bodies to attack us, then they're not technically breaking their vow...'
'Great,' Leo muttered. 'Eidolons who are also lawyers. Now I really want to kill them.”
― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

“Has he come armed, then?” she asked anxiously. “Has he brought a pistol or a sword?”

Ian shook his head, his dark hair lifting wildly in the wind.

“Oh, no, Mam!” he said. “It’s worse. He’s brought a lawyer!”
― Diana Gabaldon, Voyager

“My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“There comes a time in your life when you can no longer put off choosing. You have to choose one path or the other. You can live safe and be protected by people just like you, or you can stand up and be a leader for what is right. Always, remember this: People never remember the crowd; they remember the one person that had the courage to say and do what no one would do.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.

Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.

All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: 'Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.' He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: 'The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.' He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: 'Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.'

If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been.

All that we call progress—the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.”
― Robert G Ingersoll, About The Holy Bible

“You have the maturity of a 14-year-old boy!“ Kennedy hisses.
"And you have the chest of one.”
― Emma Chase, Appealed

“I was half lawyer; I always noticed the loopholes.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“You advised him not to get a lawyer, giving as one of your reasons the opinion that lawyers are a pain in the ass. Gentlemen, the pain is here.
-Reggie Love”
― John Grisham, The Client

“All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness. ”
― Richard Lamm

“Divorce lawyers stoke anger and fear in their clients, knowing that as long as the conflicts remain unresolved the revenue stream will keep flowing.”
― Craig Ferguson, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

“Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, Islanders & The Fisher of Men

“THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH

A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case.

In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic."

Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight.

So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic.


Suzy Kassem,
Truth Is Crying”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Mister Rob Anybody and sundry others?" said one of the figures in a dreadful voice.

"There's naebody here o' that name!" shouted Rob Anybody. "We dinna know anythin'!"

"We have here a list of criminal and civil charges totaling nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three separate offenses-"

"We wasna there!" yelled Rob Anybody desperately. "Isn't that right, lads?"

"-including more than two thousand cases of Making an Affray, Causing a Public Nuisance, Being Found Drunk, Being Found Very Drunk, Using Offensive Language (taking into account ninety-seven cases of Using Language That Was Probably Offensive If Anyone Else Could Understand It), Committing a Breach of the Peace, Malicious Lingering-"

"It's mistaken identity!" shouted Rob Anybody. "It's no' oour fault! We wuz only standing there an' someone else did it and ran awa'!"

"-Grand Theft, Petty Theft, Burglary, Housebreaking, Loitering with Intent to Commit a Felony-"

"We wuz misunderstood when we was wee bairns!" yelled Rob Anybody. "Ye're only picking on us 'cause we're blue! We always get blamed for everythin'! The polis hate us! We wasna even in the country!”
― Terry Pratchett

“But they argued as lawyers do, they twisted every answer I gave until it sounded like the opposite meaning, and I became so confused and afraid I found myself agreeing to statements that I knew were not true.”
― S.J. Parris, Heresy

“When cops are on the job they love lawyers like lions love hyenas, only minus the mutual respect.”
― Reed Farrel Coleman, The James Deans

“It is strange the way that someone who wants to find you guilty can start to make you believe in your own guilt, even when you know you are innocent. I was afraid I would condemn myself my mistake.”
― S.J. Parris, Heresy

“Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely places, especially ones with huge potential damagers awards.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“A heart can only discover what it really wants with experience.”
― Kathy Bates

“Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances.”
― Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica

“But [Stanley Wade] instead removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. They were moist not from fear but from the harsh reality of being confronted by one of his victims. How many others were out there? Why had he chosen to spend his career screwing these people?

~from "Michael's Room"~”
― John Grisham, Ford County

“I find as I grow older, I love those most, whom I loved first.”
― Th. Jefferson

“If you are a millionaire beset by blackmailers or anyone else to whose comfort the best legal advice is essential, and have decided to put your affairs in the hands of the ablest and discreetest firm in London, you proceed through a dark and grimy entry and up a dark and grimy flight of stairs; and, having felt your way along a dark and grimy passage, you come at length to a dark and grimy door. There is plenty of dirt in other parts of Ridgeway's Inn, but nowhere is it so plentiful, so rich in alluvial deposits, as on the exterior of the offices of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby. As you tap on the topmost of the geological strata concealing the ground-glass of the door, a sense of relief and security floods your being. For in London grubbiness is the gauge of a lawyer's respectability.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Girl on the Boat

“He recognized it and knew it. In others—clients, witnesses, or sometimes adversaries, he had seen or heard it: A gesture, a phrase, or a tone which exposed unintended truth in the beat of a second.”
― Jackson Burnett, The Past Never Ends

“If you don't start playing by my rules, you'll be lucky to be licking stamps in some lowly, legal aid office.”
― Linda Pohl, Lawyers, Lovers, and Lies

“There's something oddly comforting about talking to a legal guy once the billable hours clock has started running; you have passed the magical point at which a lawyer becomes your lawyer. Your lawyer is warm, your lawyer is sympathetic, your lawyer makes notes on a yellow pad and nods in all the right places. Most of the questions your lawyer asks are questions you can answer. And if you can't your lawyer will help you find a way to do so, by God. Your lawyer is always on your side. Your enemies are his enemies. To him you are never shit but always Shinola.”
― Stephen King, Bag of Bones