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Clarence Darrow Quotes
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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
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I am always suspicious of righteous indignation. Nothing is more cruel than righteous indignation.
Clarence Darrow
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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
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The truth is that brains have little to do with either the making or accumulating of money.
Clarence Darrow
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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
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If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private school... At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men.
Clarence Darrow
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A jury is more apt to be unbiased and independent than a court, but they very seldom stand up against strong public clamor. Judges naturally believe the defendant is guilty.
Clarence Darrow
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There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.
Clarence Darrow
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I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in place of love and kindness and charity.
Clarence Darrow
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No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.
Clarence Darrow
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If a man really has charge of his destiny at all, he should have something to say about getting born; and I only came through by a hair's-breadth. What had I to do with this momentous first step? In the language of the lawyer, I was not even a party of the second part.
Clarence Darrow
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.
Clarence Darrow
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The truth is, no man is white and no man is black. We are all freckled.
Clarence Darrow
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Religious doctrines do not and clearly cannot be adopted as the criminal code of a state.
Clarence Darrow
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it—religious fanaticism.
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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
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Quote of the day
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.
Corrie ten Boom
Clarence Darrow
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Born:
April 18, 1857
Died:
March 13, 1938
(aged 80)
Bio:
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer, leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform.
Known for:
Attorney for the damned
Crime, its causes and treatment (1922)
The Story of My Life (1932)
Resist not evil (1902)
Most used words:
man
life
god
voltaire
time
agnostic
human
soul
nature
wisdom
born
faith
knowledge
universe
belief
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