Update
Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 15 May 2025

Lawyers 

  1. I've never got paid. A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun.
    on his failure to receive royalties
    Bo Diddley 1928–2008 American rock musician: in Galveston County Daily News 17 September 1999
  2. The Law is the true embodiment
    Of everything that's excellent.
    It has no kind of fault or flaw,
    And I, my Lords, embody the Law.
     
    W. S. Gilbert 1836–1911 English writer of comic and satirical verse: Iolanthe (1882) act 1
  3. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
    Jean Giraudoux 1882–1944 French dramatist: La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (1935) act 2, sc. 5
  4. A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
    Samuel Johnson 1709–84 English poet, critic, and lexicographer: James Boswell Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) 15 August 1773
  5. We must never forget that the only real source of power that we as judges can tap is the respect of the people.
    Thurgood Marshall 1908–93 American Supreme Court judge: in Chicago Tribune 15 August 1981
  6. I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.
    John Pierpont Morgan 1837–1913 American financier and philanthropist: Ida M. Tarbell The Life of Elbert H. Gary (1925)
  7. No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean fingernails.
    John Mortimer 1923–2009 English novelist, barrister, and dramatist: A Voyage Round My Father (1971) act 1
  8. A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
    Mario Puzo 1920–99 American novelist: The Godfather (1969) ch. 1
  9. The Law: It has honoured us, may we honour it.
    Daniel Webster 1782–1852 American politician: speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner, 10 May 1847