Inspiring Quotes for Law Students: Fuel Your Legal Journey

""We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.""

- Malala Yousafzai

""Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.""

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

""I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.""

- Audre Lorde

""There is no force more powerful than a woman determined to rise.""

- W.E.B. DuBois

"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

""Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied.""

- Millicent Fawcett

""The best protection any woman can have is courage.""

- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

- 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

""Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.""

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

- Theodore Roosevelt

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

- Albert Einstein

"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

""Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.""

- Robert Kennedy

""There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.""

- Elie Wiesel

""Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.""

- Benjamin Franklin

"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

""Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.""

- Nelson Mandela

""Don’t let anyone speak for you, and don’t rely on others to fight for you.""

- Michelle Obama

""I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.""

- Mary Wollstonecraft

""The success of every woman should be the inspiration to another. We should raise each other up.""

- Serena Williams

""There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.""

- Michelle Obama

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

- Napoleon Hill

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

- Christopher Darden

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

- Thomas Jefferson

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

- Henry David Thoreau

"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

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

- Alan Dershowitz

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

- Robert Louis Stevenson

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

- Clarence Darrow

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

- Tim Notke

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

- Abraham Lincoln

"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

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

- Buddhist quote

""Either you run the day or the day runs you.""

- Jim Rohn

""Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.""

- Oprah Winfrey

""A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.""

- Coco Chanel

""Well-behaved women seldom make history.""

- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

""The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.""

- Eleanor Roosevelt

""The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.""

- Alice Walker

""A woman with a voice is, by definition, a strong woman.""

- Melinda Gates

""The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.""

- Ayn Rand

""If you want peace, work for justice.""

- Pope Paul VI

""The choice between law and justice is an easy one for courageous minds""

- Rebecca West

""God works wonders now and then; behold a lawyer, an honest man.""

- Benjamin Franklin

""Being a lawyer is not merely a vocation. It is a public trust.""

- Janet Reno

"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

"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

""Discipline is part of my professional training as a lawyer.""

- Mohamed ElBaradei

"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

"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.

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

- Albert Einstein

"Lawyers are the foot soldiers of our Constitution."

- Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read

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

- Mario Puzo

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

- John Kennedy

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

- Marcus Aurelius

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

- John Kennedy

""True freedom requires the rule of law and justice, and a judicial system in which the rights of some are not secured by the denial of rights to others.""

- Jonathan Sacks

"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

""Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.""

- Arthur Ashe

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

- David Brinkley

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

- Reid Hoffman

"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

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

- Walt Whitman

"Necessity knows no law; I know some attorneys of the same."

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Elon Musk

""I’m a lawyer; I win arguments for a living.""

- Bob Goff

""I am primarily a lawyer. I would rather play in the game than be the umpire.""

- Lewis F. Powell

"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

""Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.""

- Robert Louis Stevenson

""Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.""

- Timothy Leary

""A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.""

- Robert Frost

"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

"Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

""Law and justice are not always the same.""

- Gloria Steinem

""Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.""

- Will Rogers

"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

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

- Charles Dickens

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

- Robert Frost

""It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.""

- Earl Warren

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

- Mark Rober

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

- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"The first thing you learn is sacrifice and how to keep moving forward in life, helping your parents to put food on the table. You learn to fight with your work. Then you start to learn values. That’s why, every time I pull on the Argentina shirt or any other, I think about the things that happened to me when I was a kid."

- Angel Di Maria

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

- George R. R. Martin

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

- Eminem

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

- Joseph Parry

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

- Miguel Torres

""At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.""

- Aristotle

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

- Jeremy Bentham

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

- Charles Lamb

"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

"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

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

- Harry S. Truman

"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

""The more laws, the less justice.""

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Make crime pay. Become a lawyer."

- Will Rogers

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

- Raheel Farooq

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

- John Lennon

""The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.""

- Jeremy Bentham

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

- Jane Bryant Quinn

""Justice is incidental to law and order""

- J. Edgar Hoover

"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

"In the old days, you would have one lawyer to handle everything: speeding tickets, buying a house, contracts, litigation, real estate, copyrights, leasing, entertainment, intellectual property, forensic accounting, criminal offenses… the list goes on. Now, you have to have a separate lawyer for each one of those categories!"

- James Belushi

""The law is reason, free from passion.""

- Aristotle