Clarence Darrow famous quotes

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Memorial Day #Peace #Hate

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Life #Death #Sarcastic

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Peace #Life And Love #Freedom

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Trust #Law #Doe

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Mother #Believe #Atheism

I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Atheist #Men #Devil

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Funny #Witty #Powerful

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Believe #Past #Voice

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#School #Men #Long

You can only be free if I am free.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Freedom #Liberty #Libertarian

Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.
-- Clarence Darrow

#People #Laughing #Religion

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Children #Teaching #Thinking

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Inspirational #Life #Ignorance

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Art #Book #Writing

The most human thing we can do is comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Comfort #Humans

The trouble with law is lawyers.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Law #Feet #Lawyer

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow

#Sarcastic #Communication #Sarcasm

History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Carpe Diem #History Repeats Itself #Repeating History

Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is what comes out of a courtroom
-- Clarence Darrow

#Justice #Goes On #Courtroom

To think is to differ.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Education #Teacher #Thinking

Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Fighting #Causes #Lost

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

#Real #Trying #Trials

I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Hate #Humorous #Justice

There is no such thing as justice - in or out of court.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Justice #Ears #Court

Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Believe #Men #Garden

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

#Helping #Fierce #Penalties

The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Truth #Honesty #Catching Fire

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

#Law #Clothes #People

I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Funny #Work #Men

The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Ideas #Alive #Life Is

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Inspirational #Laughter #Attitude

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Death #Pleasure #Wanted

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Tyrants #Subjects

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Funny #Sarcastic #Believe

Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Wrecks #Lawyer #Poet

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Errors #Evil #Soul

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 Darrow

#Love #Lonely #Age

In this dilemma they evolved the theory of natural rights. If 'natural rights' means anything it means that the individual rights are to be determined by the conduct of Nature. But Nature knows nothing about rights in the sense of human conception.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Mean #Rights #Determined

The purpose of life is living. Men and women should get the most they can out of their lives.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Life #Men #Purpose

If there is a soul, what is it, and where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of its residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Character #Independent #Men

I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Home #Men #Atheism

When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Book #Teaching #Men

A prison is confining to the body, but whether it affects the mind, depends entirely upon the mind.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Mind #Atheism #Body

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private school . . . At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Book #School #Men

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Country #Jobs #Healing

I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor - anybody can do that - but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Odds #Law #Battle

Everything serious that he says is a joke and everything humorous that he says is dead serious.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Humorous #Atheism #Serious

A jury is more apt to be unbiased and independent than a court, but they very seldom stand up against strong public clamor. Judges naturally believe the defendant is guilty.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Strong #Believe #Independent

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

#Men #Wish #Satisfaction

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

#Religious #Doubt #Atheism

Most jury trials are contests between the rich and poor.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Trials #Rich #Poor

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Class #Statistics #Poverty

Physical deformity, calls forth our charity. But the infinite misfortune of moral deformity calls forth nothing but hatred and vengeance.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Hatred #Charity #Moral

The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Men #Thinking #Land

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Past #Practice #Years

An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Ideas #Cathedrals #Monument

The ablest lawyers are always associated with the biggest fees.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Lawyer #Fees

In the great flood of human life that is spawned upon the earth, it is not often that a man is born.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Men #Earth #Human Life

Lawyers are natural politicians.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Lawyer #Politician #Natural

To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Men #Years #Doubt

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

#Believe #Belief

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

#Wisdom #Action #Crime

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Mean #Rebel #Succeed

Criminal cases receive the attention of the press. The cruel and disagreeable things of life are more apt to get the newspaper space than the pleasant ones. It must be that most people enjoy hearing of and reading about the troubles of others. Perhaps men unconsciously feel that they rise in the general level as others go down.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Reading #Men #Space

Do you think you can cure the hatreds and the maladjustments of the world by hanging them? You simply show your ignorance and your hate when you say it. You may here and there cure hatred with love and understanding, but you can only add fuel to the flames by cruelty and hate.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Hate #Ignorance #Thinking

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Men #Thinking #Mind

Religious doctrines do not and clearly cannot be adopted as the criminal code of a state.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Religious #Criminals #Doctrine

The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Real #Doors #Life And Death

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

#Way

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Kindness #Real #Mean

The difference between the child and the man lies chiefly in the unlimited confidence and buoyancy of youth.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Children #Lying #Men

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

#Men #Intelligent #Abnormal

The truth is, no man is white and no man is black. We are all freckled.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Men #White #Black

The truth is that brains have little to do with either the making or accumulating of money.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Brain #Littles #Truth Is

Thirteen states with a population less than that of New York State alone can prevent repeal [of prohibition] until Halley's comet returns. One might as well talk about a summer vacation on Mars.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Summer #New York #Vacation

Those who enjoy the emotion of hating are much like the groups who sate their thirst for blood by hunting and hounding to death helpless animals as an outlet for their emotions.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Hate #Animal #Hunting

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

#Men #Despair #Prison

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

#Long #Moral #Constitution

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Business #Men #Race

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Good Friend #Men #Law

Most lawyers only tell you about the cases they win. I can tell you about some I lose. A lawyer who wins all his cases does not have many.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Winning #Doe #Lawyer

Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Hero #My Hero

Everyone is the heir to all that has gone before; his structure and emotional life is fixed, and no two children of nature have the same heredity. I believe everyone should and must live out what is in him. So no two lives can be the same.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Children #Believe #Emotional

Great wealth often curses all who touch it.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Wealth #Curse

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Action #Emotion #Instinct

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

#Righteous #Righteous Indignation

I knew that it is out of the question to have honest, economical government while a few are inordinately rich and the great mass of men are poor. In fact, it is to be doubted if anything really worthwhile can be done until there is a fairer distribution of wealth.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Men #Facts #Done

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Party #Destiny #Men

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Cake #Choices #Way

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Silence #Might #Contemplation

It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Law #Class #Community

It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Children #Opportunity #Too Much

Justice must take account of infinite circumstances which a human being cannot understand.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Justice #Infinite #Circumstances

Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Responsibility #Men #Law

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Mean #Fighting #Men

Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it—religious fanaticism.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Education #Religious #Danger

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.
-- Clarence Darrow

#Believe #Book #Men