Francis Bacon

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth… and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

By indignities men come to dignities.

Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.

Justice? – You get justice in the next world. In this one you have the law.

Are you threatening me? If you so much as touch me I’ll have you arrested!

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

You get a lawyer whether you’re in a military tribunal or whether you’re in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest – with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make.

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.

My focus now is to be the best justice I can be.

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.