I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
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.
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.
I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.
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.
Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
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.
The man who fights for his fellow-man is a better man than the one who fights for himself.
Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is what comes out of a courtroom.
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.
Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.
You can only be free if I am free.
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.
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.
Never forget, almost every case has been won or lost when the jury is sworn.
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.
Great wealth often curses all who touch it.
Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.