A lawyer is either a social engineer or he is a parasite on society.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a lawyer can play a constructive role in society or be detrimental to it, depending on their choices and actions.
Charles Hamilton Houston's quote encapsulates the dual nature of a lawyer's role in society. It emphasizes that lawyers hold a significant position where they can either contribute positively as social engineers, working to enhance justice and equity, or negatively as parasites, exploiting legal systems for personal gain without regard for societal well-being. This highlights the ethical responsibilities that come with the profession and encourages lawyers to choose the path of serving the community.
In practice
This quote can be used during a legal ethics seminar to inspire young lawyers to consider their impact on society.
The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.
A lawyer’s either a social engineer or … a parasite on society … A social engineer [is] a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who [understands] the Constitution of the United States and [knows] how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens.
Without education, there is no hope for our people and without hope, our future is lost
The race problem in the United States is the type of unpleasant problem which we would rather do without but which refuses to be buried.
We beg you to save young America from the blight of race prejudice. Do not bind the children within the narrow circles of your own lives.
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.
Manhattanism is the one urbanistic ideology that has fed, from its conception, on the splendors and miseries of the metropolitan condition—hyper-density—without once losing faith in it as the basis for a desirable modern culture. Manhattan's architecture is a paradigm for the exploitation of congestion.
The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
An armed society is a polite society.
Amassing of wealth is an opportunity for good deeds, not hubris
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.