Clarence Darrow Quotes

116 Sourced Quotes

Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul.

Clarence Darrow
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

Clarence Darrow
Probably the undertaker thinks less of death than almost any other man. He is so accustomed to it that his mind must involuntarily turn from its horror to a contemplation of how much he makes out of the burial.

Clarence Darrow
The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.

Clarence Darrow
Most lawyers only tell you about the cases they win. I can tell you about some I lose. A lawyer who wins all his cases does not have many.

Clarence Darrow
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.

Clarence Darrow
If there is a soul, what is it, and where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of its residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.

Clarence Darrow
Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it—religious fanaticism.

Clarence Darrow
Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility.

Clarence Darrow
I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor - anybody can do that - but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

Clarence Darrow
Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.

Clarence Darrow
The consideration and kindness shown by unfortunates to each other are surprising to those who have no experience with this class of men. Often to find real sympathy you must go to those who know what misery means.

Clarence Darrow
It is indeed strange that with all the knowledge we have gained in the past hundred years we preserve and practice the methods of an ancient and barbarous world in our dealing with crime. So long as this is observed and exercised there can be no change except to heap more cruelties and more wretchedness upon those who are the victims of our foolish system.

Clarence Darrow
Those who enjoy the emotion of hating are much like the groups who sate their thirst for blood by hunting and hounding to death helpless animals as an outlet for their emotions.

Clarence Darrow
Religious doctrines do not and clearly cannot be adopted as the criminal code of a state.

Clarence Darrow
The truth is, no man is white and no man is black. We are all freckled.

Clarence Darrow
Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

Clarence Darrow
In life one cannot eat his cake and have it, too; he must make his choice and then do the best he can to be content to go the way his judgment leads.

Clarence Darrow
The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions.

Clarence Darrow
It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.

Clarence Darrow
I knew that it is out of the question to have honest, economical government while a few are inordinately rich and the great mass of men are poor. In fact, it is to be doubted if anything really worthwhile can be done until there is a fairer distribution of wealth.

Clarence Darrow
The truth is that brains have little to do with either the making or accumulating of money.

Clarence Darrow
It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.

Clarence Darrow
I am always suspicious of righteous indignation. Nothing is more cruel than righteous indignation.

Clarence Darrow
Do you think you can cure the hatreds and the maladjustments of the world by hanging them? You simply show your ignorance and your hate when you say it. You may here and there cure hatred with love and understanding, but you can only add fuel to the flames by cruelty and hate.

Clarence Darrow