I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
“Medley”
Quotations by:
Darrow, Clarence
The most human thing we can do is comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
(Attributed)
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.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
(Attributed)
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
(Attributed)
Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
(Attributed)
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
People v. Lloyd (31 Jul. 1920)
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 (1857-1938) American lawyer
Personal Liberty (1928)
Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery. […] 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 own purpose, and the sufficiency of one’s own approval as a justification for one’s own acts.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
Resist Not Evil, ch. 16 (1903)
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
The Railroad Trainman (Nov 1909)
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
Speaking in defense of the Communist Labor Party (1920)
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer
Speech, Trial of John Scopes (13 Jul 1925)