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Favorite Quotations on
Law, Justice, and Life
"There is never a deed so foul that something couldn't be said for the guy;
that's why there are lawyers."
Melvin Belli, Los Angeles Times, December 18, 1981.
"Lawful, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction."
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
"The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends.
It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right."
Justice William J. Brennan, Roth v. United States, 1957.
"Now the problem I had in understanding the law was because of the language of
the law. Instead of taking each word and finding out the case that the word related to,
once in a while I got lazy and I would apply common sense. And then I got really
screwed up."
Lenny Bruce, ca. 1960, in John Cohen, ed., The Essential Lenny Bruce, 1967
"No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by
popular opinion."
Carrie Chapman Catt, speech on woman suffrage, U.S. Senate, February 13, 1900
"Jurisprudence, in effect, is a special branch of the science of transcendental
nonsense."
Felix S. Cohen, Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach, 1935
"All sides in a trial want to hide at least some of the truth."
Alan M. Dershowitz, U.S. News & World Report, August 9, 1982
"We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we
owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal
attitudes."
Justice Robert H. Jackson, Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
"It is seldom appropriate for one group within society to seek to insert their
moral beliefs, however profoundly held, into a document designed for people of
fundamentally differing views."
Robert Drinan, American Herald, March 25, 1974
"The law does not exist for the lawyers though there are some of us who seem to
think that it does. The law is for all the people and the lawyers are only its
ministers."
Robert A. Leflar, speech, American Judicature Society, Wall Street Journal, May 27,
1971.
"The law must be stable, but it must not stand still."
Roscoe Pound, Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, 1922
"Racism, Sexism, Homophobia. The above forms of human
blindness stem from the same root -- an inability to recognize the notion of
difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than
threatening to the defined self, when there are shared goals."
Audre Lorde
"What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in the room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
A Bewildered Teacher to Adam Sandler's Character in the Movie
Billy Madison
"Please bore someone else with your questions."
"The details of your incompetence do not interest me."
"By all means move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me."
Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (2006).
"It's amazing how much you can get if you quietly, clearly, and
authoritatively demand it."
Meryl Streep, Accepting the Best Actress in a Comedy Award at the
2007 Golden Globe Awards for her role as Miranda Priestly in The Devil
Wears Prada.
"God gave humans two ends: one to sit on and one to think with. Success is
dependent upon which end is used more; heads, you win; tails, you lose."
Unknown.
"I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the
purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity.
With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog. Here's my
book report: 'The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A
Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes.' ACADEMIA HERE I COME!"
From: Calvin and Hobbes
"Would people still buy 'Arizona' iced tea if it weren't called 'Arizona
Iced Tea'? I guess there's a lot to be said about a name of a product.
I drink Arizona Iced Tea all the time, and believe me, if it were called 'New
Jersey Iced Tea,' I would have never tried it."
Matthew Stanton (2003).
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