Clarence Darrow Quotes - Page 5

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business, and, besides, could not be done. The line between honesty and dishonesty is a narrow, shifting one and usually lets those get by that are the most subtle and already have more than they can use.

No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.

The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions.

Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.

We're all killers at heart . . . . I have never taken anybody's life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction.

My constitution was destroyed long ago; now I am living under the bylaws.

No nation can be really great that is held together by Gatling guns, and no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.

Cheating, having 'hoes,' none of that is cute. To be honest, it's really immature. I don't see how people take pride in breaking someone's heart. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

It may never come, but I fancy than no man who has sympathy for the human race does not wish that sometime those who labor should have the whole product of their toil. Probably it will never come, but I wish that the time might come when men who work in the industries would own the industries.

For to know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation.

We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.

Everybody is a potential murderer. I've never killed anyone, but I frequently get satisfaction reading the obituary notices.

Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.

All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

We know life is futile. A man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a padded cell.

Working people have alot of bad habits, but the worst of these is work.

In life one cannot eat his cake and have it, too; he must make his choice and then do the best he can to be content to go the way his judgment leads.

An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths.

Probably the undertaker thinks less of death than almost any other man. He is so accustomed to it that his mind must involuntarily turn from its horror to a contemplation of how much he makes out of the burial.

The consideration and kindness shown by unfortunates to each other are surprising to those who have no experience with this class of men. Often to find real sympathy you must go to those who know what misery means.

Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class cannot be safely ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex, heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things contribute to human behavior, to make it possible to trace all actions to a single cause.

With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed.

If a man really has charge of his destiny at all, he should have something to say about getting born; and I only came through by a hair's-breadth. What had I to do with this momentous first step? In the language of the lawyer, I was not even a party of the second part.