Clarence Darrow - The Story of My Life (1932)

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No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

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
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
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 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
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
We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

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

Clarence Darrow
Punishment as punishment is not admissible unless the offender has had the free will to select his course.

Clarence Darrow
I had a vivid imagination. Not only could I put myself in the other person's place, but I could not avoid doing so. My sympathies always went out to the weak, the suffering, and the poor. Realizing their sorrows I tried to relieve them in order that I myself might be relieved.

Clarence Darrow
Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream. The young look forth across the sea to a mirage of fairylands filled with hidden treasures; the aged turn to the fading past, and through the mist and haze that veils once familiar scenes, bygone events assume weird and fanciful proportions.

Clarence Darrow
I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.

Clarence Darrow
To know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgement and condemnation.

Clarence Darrow
Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was fifth.

Clarence Darrow
I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

Clarence Darrow
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.

Clarence Darrow
In this dilemma they evolved the theory of natural rights. If 'natural rights' means anything it means that the individual rights are to be determined by the conduct of Nature. But Nature knows nothing about rights in the sense of human conception.

Clarence Darrow
The fact that there is a general belief in a future life is no evidence of its truth

Clarence Darrow
I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man — public opinion.

Clarence Darrow
Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

Clarence Darrow
One cannot live through a long stretch of years without forming some philosophy of life. As one journeys along he gains experiences and even some ideas. Accumulated opinions and philosophy may be more important to others than the bare facts about how he lived, so my ambition is not so much to relate the occurrences as to record the ideas that life has forced me to accept; and, after all, thoughts, impressions and feelings are really life itself. I should like to think that these reflections might make existence a trifle easier for some of those who may chance to read this story.

Clarence Darrow
Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

Clarence Darrow
The truth is, no one really believes in immortality. Belief must mean something more than desire or hope.

Clarence Darrow
Some false representations contravene the law; some do not.... The sensibilities of no two men are the same. Some would refuse to sell property without carefully explaining all about its merits and defects, and putting themselves in the purchasers' place and inquiring if he himself would buy under the circumstances. But such men never would be prosperous merchants.

Clarence Darrow
In the great flood of human life that is spawned upon the earth, it is not often that a man is born.

Clarence Darrow
I was truly sorry for Mr. Bryan. But I consoled myself by thinking of the years through which he had busied himself tormenting intelligent professors with impudent questions about their faith, and seeking to arouse the ignoramuses and bigots to drive them out of their positions.

Clarence Darrow
Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man.

Clarence Darrow