Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that lawyers have a creative and emotional side that is often suppressed by their legal profession.
Clarence Darrow's quote highlights the inherent creativity and sensitivity that exists within lawyers, a profession often characterized by rigidity and formality. The metaphor of a 'wreck of a poet' implies that the artistic and expressive qualities, often associated with poets, are buried under the demands and structures of legal work, prompting reflection on the balance between passion and practicality in one's profession.
In practice
During a speech at a legal conference to emphasize the importance of creativity in law.
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.
Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?
Chase after the truth like all hell.
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
The trouble with law is lawyers.
A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure that anyone who opposed them must be either stupid and decieved or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.
It is easy to say that there are the rich and the poor, and so something should be done. But in history, there are always the rich and the poor. If the poor were not as poor, we would still call them the poor. I mean, whoever has less can be called the poor. You will always have the 10% that have less and the 10% that have the most.
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.
Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and development of human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The illusion could be explained by evolutionary processes that contained no such purpose at all. But the spread of ideas through imitation required the whole apparatus of human consciousness and intentionality
It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it, no one knows it is there.
Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces
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