Quotes by Clarence Darrow

“Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate...”

“When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it sh...”

“Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desi...”

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

“I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either. I don't believe in God as I dont believe in Mother Goose.”

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

“The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”

“You can only be free if I am free.”

“If every man who passed an unjust judgment on his fellow should be condemned, how many judges would be found so vain and foolish as to review and condemn their Makers work?”

“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.”

“Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. ... The sensibilities of no two men are the same. Some would refuse to sell property without carefully explaining all about its merits an...”

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

“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”

“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 mak...”

“Sympathy is the child of imagination”

“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 l...”

“We are born and we die; and between these two most important events in our lives more or less time elapses which we have to waste somehow or other. In the end it does not seem to matter much whethe...”

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

“[George Everett Macdonald was] a valiant soldier for human liberty.”

“There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse me...”