Top 160 Clarence Darrow Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Different strokes for different folks.”

— Clarence Darrow

2. “The most human thing we can do is comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

— Clarence Darrow

3. “Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.”

— Clarence Darrow

4. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”

— Clarence Darrow

5. “The trouble with law is lawyers.”

— Clarence Darrow

6. “To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person – few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.”

— Clarence Darrow

7. “As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”

— Clarence Darrow

8. “To think is to differ.”

— Clarence Darrow

9. “If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.”

— Clarence Darrow

10. “There is no such thing as justice – in or out of court.”

— Clarence Darrow

11. “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

12. “The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it.”

— Clarence Darrow

13. “Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.”

— Clarence Darrow

14. “All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

— Clarence Darrow

15. “I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.”

— Clarence Darrow

16. “Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?”

— Clarence Darrow

17. “Lawyers are natural politicians.”

— Clarence Darrow

18. “I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.”

— Clarence Darrow

19. “The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries.”

— Clarence Darrow

20. “Life is a never-ending school, and the really important lessons all tend to teach humanity our proper relation to the environment where we must live.”

— Clarence Darrow

21. “Everybody is a potential murderer. I’ve never killed anyone, but I frequently get satisfaction reading the obituary notices.”

— Clarence Darrow

Featured in: Reading Quotes

22. “Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought – even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.”

— Clarence Darrow

23. “Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is what comes out of a courtroom.”

— Clarence Darrow

24. “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

25. “To know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgement and condemnation.”

— Clarence Darrow

26. “True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.”

— Clarence Darrow

27. “I am an agnostic as to the question of God.”

— Clarence Darrow

28. “You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom.”

— Clarence Darrow

29. “You can only be free if I am free.”

— Clarence Darrow

30. “The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.”

— Clarence Darrow

Featured in: Strong Quotes

31. “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

32. “When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.”

— Clarence Darrow

33. “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”

— Clarence Darrow

34. “I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by, reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”

— Clarence Darrow

35. “Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more.”

— Clarence Darrow

36. “Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve.”

— Clarence Darrow

37. “Never forget, almost every case has been won or lost when the jury is sworn.”

— Clarence Darrow

38. “Scopes isn’t on trial; civilization is on trial.”

— Clarence Darrow

39. “Working people have alot of bad habits, but the worst of these is work.”

— Clarence Darrow

40. “Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.”

— Clarence Darrow

41. “History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history.”

— Clarence Darrow

42. “With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed.”

— Clarence Darrow

43. “Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream.”

— Clarence Darrow

44. “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

45. “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

46. “Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded.”

— Clarence Darrow

47. “The ablest lawyers are always associated with the biggest fees.”

— Clarence Darrow

48. “One believes in the truthfulness of a man because of his long experience with the man, and because the man has always told a consistent story. But no man has told so consistent a story as nature.”

— Clarence Darrow

49. “Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.”

— Clarence Darrow

50. “There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.”

— Clarence Darrow