Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant...

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.

No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the...

The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

It is unfair to believe everything we hear about lawyers, some of it might not be true.

When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

The magistrates are the ministers for the laws, the judges their interpreters, the rest of us are servants of the law, that we all may be free.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me...

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for...

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

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws...

Keep out of Chancery. It’s being ground to bits in a slow mill; it’s being roasted at a slow fire; it’s being stung to death by single bees; it’s being drowned by drops; it’s going...

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.