Legal proverbs

Page 4

◆ We call our country home of the brave and land of the free, but it's not. We give a false portrayal of freedom. We're not free — if we were, we'd allow people their freedom. Prohibiting something doesn't make it go away. Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it's run illegally by dirt-bags who are criminals. If it's legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be far better.

- Jesse Ventura99

◆ To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person - few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.

- Clarence Darrow99

◆ The witch-hunt narrative is a really popular story that goes like this: Lots of people were falsely convicted of child sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s. And they were all victims of a witch-hunt. It just doesn't happen to line up with the facts when you actually look at the cases themselves in detail. But it's a really popular narrative — I think it's absolutely fair to say that's the conventional wisdom. It's what most people now think is the uncontested truth, and those cases had no basis in fact. And what 15 years of painstaking trial court research (says) is that that's not a very fair description of those cases, and in fact many of those cases had substantial evidence of abuse. The witch-hunt narrative is that these were all gross injustices to the defendant. In fact, what it looks like in retrospect is the injustices were much more often to children.

- Ross Cheit99

◆ To achieve the impossible, you must attempt the absurd

- Jon R. Michaelsen99

◆ If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent.

- Albert Camus99

◆ In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of [Joyce's] characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season spring.

- John Munro Woolsey99

◆ Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades.

- Sara Sheridan99

◆ Illegal Is Never Legal, copious Legal is sometimes Illegal.....

- Chandan Ray99

◆ There are many legal and psychological ramifications to using Krav Maga in the real world and nearly all of them are extremely unpleasant.

- Craig De Ruisseau99

◆ What the fuck is legal in this universe? Stars eat each other, wolves eat the pigs, and Grandma fucks over Little Red Riding Hood.

- Rawi Hage99

◆ … you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.

- Terry Pratchett99

◆ [you'll acquire] A certain amount of cynicism. This business works on you. When you were in law school you had some noble idea what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an advocate for your client's principles. Then after you practice for six months you realize you were nothing but hired guns. Mouthpieces for sale to the highest bidder, available to anybody, any crook, any sleazebag with enough money to pay your outrageous fees. Nothing shocks you. It's supposed to be an honorable profession, but you'll meet so many crooked lawyers you'll want to quit and find an honest job. Yeah Mitch, you'll get cynical. And it's sad, really.

- John Grisham99

◆ And to fight this beast of wrong is what I intend to do. To do otherwise is to sidestp this rabid injustice.

- John-Talmage Mathis99

◆ I believe that there is something in all of us that is seeking expression, that wants to be heard, that wants to be accepted and respected and loved. We each express ourselves in different ways - through manipulation or domination, through receiving and giving pain, through crying, through loving, through giving hope and inspiration to others. We are all seeking the same thing - expression of who we are and what we want from this life.

- Robin D. Hart99

◆ Never trust a man who dresses too well or stays too clean. It ain't natural and whatever he's up to probably ain't legal.

- Sue Merrell99