Clarence Darrow Quotes - Page 2

With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.

We are born and we die; and between these two most important events in our lives more or less time elapses which we have to waste somehow or other. In the end it does not seem to matter much whether we have done so in making money, or practicing law, or reading or playing, or in any other way, as long as we felt we were deriving a maximum of happiness out of our doings.

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.

Never forget, almost every case has been won or lost when the jury is sworn.

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.

Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.

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.

An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve.

I am sure of very little, and I shouldn't be surprised if those things were wrong.

Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

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.

Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.

The efforts of the medical profession in the US to control:...its...job it proposes to monopolize. It has been carrying on a vigorous campaign all over the country against new methods and schools of healing because it wants the business...I have watched this medical profession for a long time and it bears watching.

The truth is always modern and there never comes a time when it is safe to give it voice.

It is indeed strange that with all the knowledge we have gained in the past hundred years we preserve and practice the methods of an ancient and barbarous world in our dealing with crime. So long as this is observed and exercised there can be no change except to heap more cruelties and more wretchedness upon those who are the victims of our foolish system.

The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.

The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries.

The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.

I am always suspicious of righteous indignation. Nothing is more cruel than righteous indignation.

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today.