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.
It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.
Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
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