Clarence Darrow quotes - page 3

Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they serve. (Clarence Darrow)
Even Voltaire's father could not make a lawyer out of a genius. To be a good lawyer, one must have a mind and a disposition to venerate the past; a respect for precedents; a belief in the wisdom and the sanctity of the dead. Voltaire had genius, imagination, feeling, and poetry, and these gifts always have been, and always will be, incompatible with the practice of law. View quote
Clarence Darrow
It is not for the world to judge, but to crown them all alike. Each and all lived out their own being, did their work in their own way, and carried a reluctant, stupid humanity to greater possibilities and grander heights. View quote
Clarence Darrow
To disband the armies and destroy the forts, to diffuse love and brotherhood, and peace and justice in the place of war and strife, could tend only to the building up of character, the elevation of the soul, and the strength and well-being of the state. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Hell, that's why they make erasers. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Much of his work he did while confined to his bed. He was always an invalid, always obliged to take great care of himself, living constantly with death just before him, never idle a moment for fear his work would not be done. Probably no man ever lived who assailed the Church and the State with the same wit and keenness that was always at Voltaire's command; and yet in spite of this he managed to live comfortably, accumulate riches and die in peace. View quote
Clarence Darrow
For to know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects. View quote
Clarence Darrow
It's not bad people I fear so much as good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel- he believes in punishment. View quote
Clarence Darrow
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed. View quote
Clarence Darrow
The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries. (Clarence Darrow)
The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along. View quote
Clarence Darrow
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away. View quote
Clarence Darrow
To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess. View quote
Clarence Darrow
None meet life honestly and few heroically. View quote
Clarence Darrow
If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man. View quote
Clarence Darrow
The purpose of life is living. Men and women should get the most they can out of their lives. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Depressions may bring people closer to the church but so do funerals. (Clarence Darrow)
No iconoclast can possibly escape the severest criticism. View quote
Clarence Darrow
I am an agnostic as to the question of God. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship. Can anyone call this scheme of creation and damnation moral? It defies every principle of morality, as man conceives morality. Can anyone believe today that the whole world was destroyed by flood, save only Noah and his family and a male and female of each species of animal that entered the Ark? There are almost a million species of insects alone. How did Noah match these up and make sure of getting male and female to reproduce life in the world after the flood had spent its force? And why should all the lower animals have been destroyed? Were they included in the sinning of man? This is a story which could not beguile a fairly bright child of five years of age today. View quote
Clarence Darrow
Had the modern professors of eugenics had power in France in 1694, they probably would not have permitted such a child to have been born. Their scientific knowledge would have shown conclusively that no person of value could have come from the union of his father and mother. In those days, nature had not been instructed by the professors of eugenics and so Voltaire was born. View quote
Clarence Darrow