Best 164 quotes of Clarence Darrow on MyQuotes

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.

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

An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths.

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.

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

An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today.

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

Chase after the truth like all hell.

Cheating, having 'hoes,' none of that is cute. To be honest, it's really immature. I don't see how people take pride in breaking someone's heart. The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

Chloroform unfit children. Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit to live.

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause . . . True courage and manhood come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world, the faith in one's purpose, and the sufficiency of one's own approval as a justification for one's own acts.

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.

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

Different strokes for different folks.

Do I need to argue to Your Honor that cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only causes hatred; that if there is any way to soften this human heart which is hard enough at its best, if there is any way to kill evil and hatred and all that goes with it, it is not through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is through charity, and love, and understanding?

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.

Each child should be more intelligent than his parents.

Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it—religious fanaticism.

Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

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

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.

Everyone is the heir to all that has gone before; his structure and emotional life is fixed, and no two children of nature have the same heredity. I believe everyone should and must live out what is in him. So no two lives can be the same.

Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law. ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man.

Everything serious that he says is a joke and everything humorous that he says is dead serious.

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

...finally men were saved only through God's son dying for them, and that unless human beings believed this silly, impossible and wicked story they were doomed to hell? Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship.

For to know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation.

Great wealth often curses all who touch it.

History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.

Hoover, if elected, will do one thing that is almost incomprehensible to the human mind: he will make a great man out of Coolidge.

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one.

I am always suspicious of righteous indignation. Nothing is more cruel than righteous indignation.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.

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.

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.

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.

I do not believe in god because I do not believe in Mother Goose.

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.

I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it.

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.