Top 160 Clarence Darrow Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “The truth is that brains have little to do with either the making or accumulating of money.”

— Clarence Darrow

103. “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

104. “Great wealth often curses all who touch it.”

— Clarence Darrow

105. “Every thought of pity is like the balm of Gilead to our souls.”

— Clarence Darrow

106. “There are two things that kill a genius: a fatal disease and contentment.”

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow

108. “Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it – religious fanaticism.”

— Clarence Darrow

109. “Anyone can spot a lie, unless he is in need of that lie.”

— Clarence Darrow

110. “It is bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins.”

— Clarence Darrow

111. “Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.”

— Clarence Darrow

112. “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

113. “Depressions may bring people closer to the church but so do funerals.”

— Clarence Darrow

114. “I go to a better tailor than any of you and pay more for my clothes. The only difference is that you probably don’t sleep in yours.”

— Clarence Darrow

115. “Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.”

— Clarence Darrow

116. “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

117. “Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.”

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow

119. “Most jury trials are contests between the rich and poor.”

— Clarence Darrow

120. “Justice must take account of infinite circumstances which a human being cannot understand.”

— Clarence Darrow

121. “A prison is confining to the body, but whether it affects the mind, depends entirely upon the mind.”

— Clarence Darrow

122. “Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.”

— Clarence Darrow

123. “None meet life honestly and few heroically.”

— Clarence Darrow

124. “One cannot live through a long stretch of years without forming some philosophy of life.”

— Clarence Darrow

125. “The truth is, no man is white and no man is black. We are all freckled.”

— Clarence Darrow

126. “The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public.”

— Clarence Darrow

127. “The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom.”

— Clarence Darrow

128. “The fact that there is a general belief in a future life is no evidence of its truth.”

— Clarence Darrow

129. “I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

— Clarence Darrow

130. “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

131. “The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.”

— Clarence Darrow

132. “In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.”

— Clarence Darrow

133. “The time will come when all people will view with horror light way in which society and its courts of law now take human life; and when that time comes, the way will be clear to device some better method of dealing with poverty and ignorance and their frequent byproducts, which we call crime.”

— Clarence Darrow

134. “People in this world are not often logical.”

— Clarence Darrow

135. “When they want a working man for anything excepting work they want him for conspiracy.”

— Clarence Darrow

136. “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

137. “A criminal is someone without the capital to incorporate.”

— Clarence Darrow

138. “My constitution was destroyed long ago; now I am living under the bylaws.”

— Clarence Darrow

139. “In order to have enough freedom, it is necessary to have too much.”

— Clarence Darrow

140. “No law was ever made by the people; they are made for the people.”

— Clarence Darrow

141. “Sympathy is the child of imagination.”

— Clarence Darrow

142. “I am simply an agnostic. I haven’t yet had time or opportunity to explore the universe, and I don’t know what I might run on to in some nook or corner.”

— Clarence Darrow

143. “I am sure of very little, and I shouldn’t be surprised if those things were wrong.”

— Clarence Darrow

144. “Religious doctrines do not and clearly cannot be adopted as the criminal code of a state.”

— Clarence Darrow

145. “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

146. “You can’t get to a pleasant place to be at unless you use pleasant methods to get there. When you are dealing with a human society the means is fully as important as the end.”

— Clarence Darrow

147. “The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.”

— Clarence Darrow

148. “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

149. “Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.”

— Clarence Darrow

150. “There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.”

— Clarence Darrow