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 common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.
What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.
To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.
More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.
I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.
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