Henry David Thoreau

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

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

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

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

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.

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

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

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

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