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.
[about tabloid magazines] Just because you read it in a magazine or see it on a TV screen doesn't make it factual. To buy it is to feed it.
She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.
The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution.
The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you've never even thought of. And you're stuck with you're past when you're stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.
What you see determines how you interpret the world, which in turn influences what you expect of the world and how you expect the story of your life to unfold.
But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers.
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