Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrowwas an American lawyer, leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. He was best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks. Some of his other notable cases included defending Ossian Sweet, and John T. Scopes in the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, in which he opposed William Jennings Bryan. Called a "sophisticated country lawyer", he remains notable for his wit, which...
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth18 April 1857
CityKinsman, OH
I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.
First and last, it's a question of money. Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.
The purpose of life is living. Men and women should get the most they can out of their lives.
In the great flood of human life that is spawned upon the earth, it is not often that a man is born.
The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the soul and brain of man.
Criminal cases receive the attention of the press. The cruel and disagreeable things of life are more apt to get the newspaper space than the pleasant ones. It must be that most people enjoy hearing of and reading about the troubles of others. Perhaps men unconsciously feel that they rise in the general level as others go down.
When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature.
If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.
I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man -- public opinion.
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other.
The purpose of man is like the purpose of a pollywog - to wiggle along as far as he can without dying; or, to hang to life until death takes him.
Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause . . . True courage and manhood come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world, the faith in one's purpose, and the sufficiency of one's own approval as a justification for one's own acts.