Inspiring Wisdom: A Curated Collection of Inspirational Quotes for Attorneys

"Courage is the most important attribute of a lawyer. It is more important than competence or vision. It can never be an elective in any law school. It can never be de-limited, dated or outworn, and it should pervade the heart, the halls of justice and the chambers of the mind."

- Robert F. Kennedy

"I do solemnly swear or affirm: I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Arkansas, and I will faithfully perform the duties of attorney at law. I will maintain the respect and courtesy due to courts of justice, judicial officers, and those who assist them. I will, to the best of my ability, abide by the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and any other standards of ethics proclaimed by the courts, and in doubtful cases I will attempt to abide by the spirit of those ethical rules and precepts of honor and fair play. To opposing parties and their counsel, I pledge fairness, integrity, and civility, not only in court, but also in all written and oral communications. I will not reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the impoverished, the defenseless, or the oppressed. I will endeavor always to advance the cause of justice and to defend and to keep inviolate the rights of all persons whose trust is conferred upon me as an attorney at law."

- Oath administered to new attorneys in Arkansas

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

- Harper Lee

"Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on."

- Thurgood Marshall

"“Seek justice for all . . . Champion the cause of those who deserve redress for injury to personal property . . . Promote the public good through concerted efforts to secure safe products, a safe work place, a clean environment, and quality healthcare . . . Further the rule of law in a civil justice system, and protect the rights of the accused . . . Advance the common law and the finest traditions of jurisprudence . . . and uphold the honor and dignity of the legal profession and the highest standards of ethical conduct and integrity.”"

- Association of Trial Lawyers of America

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done."

- Canons of Professional Ethics Canon 5

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one."

- Mark Twain

"“Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason…The law, which is perfection of reason.”"

- Sir Edward Coke

"“The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone his due.”"

- Justinian I

"“The law is reason free from passion.”"

- Aristotle

"“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”"

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"“To be a successful contingency attorney requires three things: 1). Accept only good cases; 2). Settle the good cases; and 3). Try the rest.”"

- Gary Vert

"“No man is above the law and no man below it.”"

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power—and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition. But that’s not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience."

- Barack Obama

"I would rather create a precedent than find one."

- William O. Douglas

"We recognize that stare decisis embodies an important social policy. It represents an element of continuity in law, and is rooted in the psychologic need to satisfy reasonable expectations. But stare decisis is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision, however recent and questionable, when such adherence involves collision with a prior doctrine more embracing in its scope, intrinsically sounder, and verified by experience…This Court, unlike the House of Lords, has from the beginning rejected a doctrine of disability at self-correction."

- Felix Frankfurter

"Anyone who believes a better day dawns when lawyers are eliminated bears the burden of explaining who will take their place. Who will protect the poor, the injured, the victims of negligence, the victims of racial violence?"

- John J. Curtin, Jr.

"Your law may be perfect, your knowledge of human affairs may be such as to enable you to apply it with wisdom and skill, and yet without individual acquaintance with men, their haunts and habits, the pursuit of the profession becomes difficult, slow, and expensive. A lawyer who does not know men is handicapped."

- Louis D. Brandeis

"The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence."

- Abraham Lincoln

"How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle."

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"The good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules something intelligible for the guidance of suitors. 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."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Being a lawyer is not merely a vocation. It is a public trust, and each of us has an obligation to give back to our communities."

- Janet Reno

"To administer justice there must be a firm determination to find out the truth, for if this be wanting in the beginning, the middle and the end always will go wrong."

- Miquel de Cervantes Saavedra

"Our profession is good, if practiced in the spirit of it; it is damnable fraud and iniquity when its true spirit is supplied by a spirit of mischief-making and money catching."

- Daniel Webster

"A good advocate should be a good actor. The most cautious cross-examiner will often elicit a damaging answer. Now is the time for the greatest self-control. If you show by your face how the answer hurt, you may lose your case by that one point alone. How often one sees the cross-examiner fairly staggered by such an answer. He pauses, perhaps blushes, and after he has allowed the answer to have its full effect, finally regains his self-possession, but seldom his control of the witness….."

- Francis Wellman

"The issue of a cause rarely depends upon a speech and is but seldom even affected by it. But there is never a cause contested, the result of which is not mainly dependent upon the skill with which the advocate conducts his cross-examination."

- Francis Wellman

"“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”"

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

- Atticus Finch

"The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience."

- Atticus Finch

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis."

- Thurgood Marshall

"I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor – anybody can do that – but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall."

- Clarence S. Darrow

"Be courageous. Challenge orthodoxy. Stand up for what you believe in. When you are in your rocking chair talking to your grandchildren many years from now, be sure you have a good story to tell."

- Amal Clooney

"YOUR WORTH AS A PERSON AND ATTORNEY IS NOT DEFINED BY THE BAR EXAM, NOW OR EVER."

- Plastic-Fact6207

"In the heart of every lawyer, worthy of the name, there burns a deep ambition so to bear himself that the profession may be stronger by reason of his passage through its ranks, and that he may leave the law itself a better instrument of human justice than he found it."

- John W. Davis

"[W]hat many of those who oppose the use of juries in civil trials seem to ignore [is that t]he founders of our Nation considered the right of trial by jury in civil cases an important bulwark against tyranny and corruption, a safeguard too precious to be left to the whim of the sovereign, or, it might be added, to that of the judiciary."

- Chief Justice William Rehnquist

"The more laws, the less justice."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Whatever you choose to do, leave tracks. That means don’t do it just for yourself. You will want to leave the world a little better for your having lived."

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"We need young people with the courage to say, ‘This is our world now, and there are going to be some changes."

- Amal Clooney

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots."

- Thurgood Marshall

"The safety of the people shall be the highest law."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling never fails of employment in it."

- Thomas Jefferson

"“Take to the study of the law. Possession is nine points of it, which thou hast of me. Self-possession is the tenth . . .”"

- R.D. Blackmore

"I will look, your Honor, and endeavor to find a precedent, if you require it; though it would seem to be a pity that the Court should lose the honor of being the first to establish so just a rule."

- Rufus Choate

"In the United States, every one is personally interested in enforcing the obedience of the whole community to the law; for as the minority may shortly rally the majority to its principles, it is interested in professing that respect for the decrees of the legislator which it may soon have occasion to claim for its own. However irksome an enactment may be, the citizen of the United States complies with it, not only because it is the work of the majority, but because it is his own, and he regards it as a contract to which he is himself a party."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right."

- Chief Justice John Marshall

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free."

- Clarence S. Darrow

"Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for."

- Clarence Darrow

"It is the duty of every citizen /resident of any country, nationals as well as expatriates to know the basics of the governing laws of the country one resides. Ignorance of the law or unawareness cannot be pleaded to escape liability."

- Henrietta Newton Martin

"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard."

- Tim Notke

"The lawyers’ contribution to the civilizing of humanity is evidenced in the capacity of lawyers to argue furiously in the courtroom, then sit down as friends over a drink or dinner. This habit is often interpreted by the layman as a mark of their ultimate corruption. In my opinion, it is their greatest moral achievement: It is a characteristic of humane tolerance that is most desperately needed at the present time."

- John R. Silber

"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."

- Marcus Aurelius

"Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."

- Abraham Lincoln

"And I take this opportunity to declare, that …I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me…the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of the constitution, that ever was found in an English law-book."

- James Otis

"“The success of any legal system is measured by its fidelity to the universal ideal of justice.”"

- Earl Warren

"“Learn to do right; seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”"

- The Song of Solomon – Isaiah 1:17

"“The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.”"

- Samuel Johnson

"Your Honours will find in the old book, concerning the office of a justice of peace, precedents of general warrants to search suspected houses. But in more modern books you will find only special warrants to search such and such houses specially named, in which the complainant has before sworn he suspects his goods are concealed; and you will find it adjudged that special warrants only are legal. In the same manner I rely on it, that the writ prayed for in this petition being general is illegal. It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer."

- James Otis

"It’s every lawyer’s dream to help shape the law, not just react to it."

- Alan Dershowitz

"Now one of the most essential branches of English liberty, is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle; and while he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ [of assistance], if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege."

- James Otis

"“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually also recognize the voice of justice.”"

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"“What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; that is the whole Law: the rest is interpretation.”"

- Hillel

"A good lawyer is going to try to protect her client."

- John Kennedy

"This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful-knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, just as when curfew or home detention is placed on a person."

- William O. Douglas

"Let me not be thought as intending anything derogatory to the profession of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order. Well am I aware that we have in this ancient city innumerable worthy gentlemen, the knights-errant of modern days, who go about redressing wrongs and defending the defenseless, not for the love of filthy lucre, nor the selfish cravings of renown, but merely for the pleasure of doing good. Sooner would I throw this trusty pen into the flames and cork up my ink bottle forever, than infringe even for a nail’s breadth upon the dignity of these truly benevolent champions of the distressed. On the contrary, I allude merely to those caitiff scouts who, in these latter days of evil, infest the skirts of the profession, as did the recreant Cornish knights of yore the honorable order of chivalry, – who under its auspices, commit flagrant wrongs, – who thrive by quibbles, by quirks and chicanery, and like vermin increase the corruption in which they are engendered."

- Washington Irving

"I chose to go to law school because I thought that someday, somehow I’d make a difference."

- Christopher Darden

"If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can."

- Thomas Jefferson

"“It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”"

- Voltaire

"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."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is the lawyers who run our civilization for us — our governments, our business, our private lives. Most legislators are lawyers; they make our laws. Most presidents, governors, commissioners, along with their advisers and brain-trusters are lawyers; they administer our laws. All the judges are lawyers; they interpret and enforce our laws. There is no separation of powers where the lawyers are concerned. There is only a concentration of all government power — in the lawyers."

- Fred Rodell

"The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge."

- Napoleon Hill

"Lawyers are the foot soldiers of our Constitution."

- Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read

"But the word “right” is one of the most deceptive of pitfalls; it is so easy to slip from a qualified meaning in the premise to an unqualified one in the conclusion. Most rights are qualified."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools."

- Thomas Jefferson

"As a lawyer, I can assure you that a lot of document drafting is repetitive, involving cutting and pasting from templates. But the best lawyers bring a unique perspective to the process and anticipate clients’ problems."

- Ro Khanna

"Running for office is similar to being a trial lawyer in a very long trial. It requires adrenaline and stamina; it requires being in shape mentally and emotionally. It’s a marathon."

- Kamala Harris

"Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Well, I don’t know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do."

- J. P. Morgan

"Lawyers are operators of toll bridges which anyone in search of justice must pass."

- Jane Bryant Quinn

"The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be."

- Reid Hoffman

"A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him."

- David Brinkley

"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"I was one of the first women partners at my law firm, the first woman in my Minnesota prosecutor job, and the first woman elected from my state to the Senate. So advice from women who had done similar things was important for me."

- Amy Klobuchar

"There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded."

- Mark Twain

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

- Albert Einstein

"“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”"

- Chief Justice John Marshall

"“For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium.”"

- Sir Edward Coke

"“I used to say that, as Solicitor General, I made three arguments of every case. First came the one that I planned–as I thought, logical, coherent, complete. Second was the one actually presented–interrupted, incoherent, disjointed, disappointing. The third was the utterly devastating argument that I thought of after going to bed that night.”"

- Robert H. Jackson

"“As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.”"

- Adlai Ewing Stevenson

"“Our defense is not in our armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.”"

- Albert Einstein

"“There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”"

- Moses

"“Ignorance of the law excuses no man, not that all men know the law, but ’tis an excuse every man will plead and no man can tell how to confute him.”"

- John Selden

"“He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.”"

- Charles Lamb

"And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t’ other half for the freedom to speak."

- James Russell Lowell

"As [a citizen] is a “law-maker,” he should not be a “law-breaker,” for he ought to be conscious that every departure from the established ordinances of society is an infraction of his rights. His power can only be maintained by the supremacy of the laws, as in monarchies, the authority of the king is asserted by obedience to his orders. The citizen in lending a cheerful assistance to the ministers of the law, on all occasions, is merely helping to maintain his own power. This feature in particular, distinguishes the citizen from the subject."

- James Fenimore Cooper

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Of course, I believe that every child has a right to decent education and shelter, food and medical care; of course, I believe that refugees from political oppression have a right to a haven in a free land; of course I believe that every person has a right to work in dignity and for a decent wage. I do believe and affirm the social contract that grounds these rights. But more to the point I also believe that I am commanded-that we are obligated-to realize those rights."

- Robert M. Cover

"That general warrants, whereby an officer of messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted."

- Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776

"Equal Justice Under Law."

- Inscription on West Portico of Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C.

"Justice the Guardian of Liberty."

- Inscription on East Portico of Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C.

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

- Abraham Lincoln

"We will either find a way, or make one."

- Anibal Barca

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

- Albert Einstein

"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."

- Abraham Lincoln

"When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"True law is right reason in agreement with nature."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"If you don’t have a good case, and you don’t have a good message, then shining a light on it is not going to get you very far."

- Amal Clooney

"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

- Johnnie Cochran

"In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning people are all the same."

- Albert Einstein

"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."

- Albert Einstein

"A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; … This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"“The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes has been devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed of our political faith.”"

- Thomas Jefferson

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional…..All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle."

- Earl Warren

"Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams."

- Ashley Smith

"If I see a problem, I like to think if there’s a better way to do it."

- Mark Rober

"In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on."

- Robert Frost

"Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment."

- Mark Twain

"Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, a river of righteous living that will never run dry."

- The Holy Bible – Amos 5:24

"As a lawyer and a former prosecutor, I know the limits of the power and authority of the president. I know what is legal and what is not."

- Rodrigo Duterte

"America is of course sovereign; but her sovereignty is woven in an international web that makes her one of the family of nations. The ties with all the continents are close-commercially as well as culturally. Our concerns are planetary, beyond sunrises and sunsets. Citizenship implicates us in those problems and perplexities, as well as in domestic ones. We cannot exercise and enjoy citizenship in world perspective without the right to travel abroad; and I see no constitutional way to curb it unless, as I said, there is the power to detain."

- William O. Douglas

"Anything less than full justice is cruelty."

- William Penn

"The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation."

- Jeremy Bentham

"Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you."

- Walt Whitman

"Bad luck either destroys you or it makes you the man you really are."

- Miguel Torres

"Famous people feel that they must perpetually be on the crest of the wave, not realising that it is against all the rules of life. You can’t be on top all the time, it isn’t natural."

- Olivia De Havilland

"There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content."

- Fred Rodell

"What we need to do is to stop passing laws. We have enough laws now to govern the world for the next 10,000 years. Every crank who has a foolish notion that he would like to impose upon everybody else hastens to some legislative body and demands that it be graven upon the statutes. Every fanatic who wants to control his neighbor’s conduct is here or at some other legislative body demanding that a law be passed to regulate that neighbor’s conduct."

- James A. Reed

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident."

- Charles Lamb

"Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts."

- Charles Dickens

"If you can manipulate news, a judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail, a smart accountant can keep a thief from paying taxes, a smart reporter could ruin your reputation — unfairly."

- Mario Cuomo

"“It is unwise to pay too much but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money. When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common sense law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can’t be done.”"

- John Ruskin

"“One thing I have learned from this experience is that it is hard to keep an audience attentive and involved with a “speech,” but it’s easy if you tell a story that involves your listeners and inspires them with a memorable moral.”"

- Jim M. Perdue

"Oyez, oyez, oyez! All persons having business before the honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable Court."

- Marshal’s cry at the opening of public sessions of the United States Supreme Court

"“These are the times that try men’s souls.”"

- Thomas Paine

"“A grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.”"

- Tom Wolfe (quoting Sol Wachtler)

"“Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.”"

- Harry S. Truman

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."

- John Lennon

"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

"And do as adversaries do in law – Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends."

- William Shakespeare

"The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow-citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to the air."

- Woodrow Wilson

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."

- Buddhist quote

"Look well to the right of you, look well to the left of you, for one of you three won’t be here next year."

- Edward H. Warren

"Love myself I do. Not everything, but I love the good as well as the bad. I love my crazy lifestyle, and I love my hard discipline. I love my freedom of speech and the way my eyes get dark when I’m tired. I love that I have learned to trust people with my heart, even if it will get broken. I am proud of everything that I am and will become."

- Johnny Weir

"Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories."

- George R. R. Martin

"Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend."

- Harry S. Truman

"Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs. Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others."

- William O. Douglas

"Arguing with a lawyer is not the hardest thing in the world; not arguing is."

- Raheel Farooq

"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

- Ben Franklin

"“Lawyers with a weakness for seeing the merits of the other side end up being employed by neither.”"

- Richard J. Barnet

"“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”"

- Mark Twain

"“The law must have the last word.”"

- Jacques Chirac

"“And do as adversaries do in law – Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.”"

- William Shakespeare

"“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – – deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth – – persistent, persuasive, unrealistic.”"

- John F. Kennedy

"Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment."

- Mario Puzo

"He who is prepared has the battle half fought."

- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

"“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”"

- Lord Mansfield

"I'm alone and outgunned, scared and inexperienced, but I'm _right_."

- John Grisham

"Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; justice is what comes out of a courtroom."

- Clarence Darrow

"Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely."

- Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Laws should be like clothes. They should fit the people they are meant to serve."

- Clarence Darrow

"We cannot not be here. People look to us."

- Mari Wright

"The color of justice is green."

- Johnnie Cochran

"I work not only for the O.J.s, but also the No Js."

- Johnnie Cochran

"The jury system has come to stand for all that is best about the American system of justice; and all that is worst."

- John Grisham

"If you're gonna be stupid you gotta be tough."

- John Grisham

"I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

- Blaise Pascal

"Men of few words are the best men."

- William Shakespeare

"“Come now, and let us reason together . . .”"

- The Song of Solomon – Isaiah

"Make crime pay. Become a lawyer."

- Will Rogers

"The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed."

- Eminem

"Your brand is your promise to the consumer. It’s your reputation. It’s the encapsulation of your core values. . .When someone attempts to steal our brand it’s personal, as though some part of my family has been assaulted."

- Doug Shafer

"Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond."

- Hunter S. Thompson

"“When law and nature collide, nature usually wins.”"

- Forrest Reynolds

"The practice of law is a busyness."

- Gary Vert

"Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold."

- Joseph Parry

"Life is too short for long-term grudges."

- Elon Musk

"He must make instant decisions that would take months for a lawyer."

- Paul Harvey

"“There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”"

- Washington Irving

"This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read."

- Sir Winston Churchill

"All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

- Clarence Darrow

"“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”"

- Author Unknown

"There is always room at the top."