Clarence Darrow Quotes

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

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

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

I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

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

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.

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.

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

When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.

I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by, reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.

A criminal is someone without the capital to incorporate

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.

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.

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.

Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.

Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

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

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

Anyone can spot a lie, unless he is in need of that lie.

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.

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

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.

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

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

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

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.

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.

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

I do not believe in god because I do not believe in Mother Goose.

The man who fights for his fellow-man is a better man than the one who fights for himself.

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.

Each child should be more intelligent than his parents.

An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.

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

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

You can only be free if I am free.

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

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.

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