“Self-defense is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it.”
Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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Douglas William Jerrold 16
English dramatist and writer 1803–1857Related quotes
"Episodes and Visions", p. 308
Desert Solitaire (1968)
Context: To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori; Civilization is Sartre; culture Cocteau; Civilization is mutual aid and self-defense; culture is the judge, the lawbook and the forces of Law & Ordure (sic); Civilization is uprising, insurrection, revolution; culture is the war of state against state, or of machines against people, as in Hungary and Vietnam; Civilization is tolerance, detachment and humor, or passion, anger, revenge; culture is the entrance examination, the gas chamber, the doctoral dissertation and the electric chair; Civilization is the Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno fighting the Germans, then the Reds, then the Whites, then the Reds again; culture is Stalin and the Fatherland; Civilization is Jesus turning water into wine; culture is Christ walking on the waves; Civilization is a youth with a Molotov cocktail in his hand; culture is the Soviet tank or the L. A. cop that guns him down; Civilization is the wild river; culture, 592,000 tons of cement; Civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates, like tired, sick, stifled blood.

“As a lawyer I am before and above all things for the supremacy of law.”
The Queen v. Bishop of London (1889), L. R. 23 Q. B. 452.

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967

1997 speech at University of Virginia Law School, as quoted in Marc Galanter, Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture (2006), p. 3.
Books, articles, and speeches

Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587, 594 (1961).
Judicial opinions
“In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin.”

“It was anticipating self-defense.”
On why he once hit a catcher in the face mask while playing minor league baseball, CBS TV (December 30, 1984)

“Lawyer – One skilled in the circumvention of the law.”
Leonard D. White (1935), Government Career Service, p. 46, as cited in: Moynihan (2009)