Quotes

The attorneys at Ashenden & Associates, P.C., a personal injury law firm in Atlanta, Georgia, have compiled a list of their favorite quotations, included below:

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
Thomas Jefferson

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.
Proverbs 31:8,9

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizen in a Republic”

Trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the preexistent rights of nature.
James Madison

The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes has been devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed of our political faith.
Thomas Jefferson, first inaugural address

The tree of liberty, from time to time, must be replenished with the blood of patriots.
Thomas Jefferson

If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.
James A. Garfield

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.
Martin Luther

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best thing about the future is that is comes only one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln

The one who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Ancient Chinese proverb

There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
William James

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live. To be lulled into security is to die.
Oscar Wilde

Keep away from the people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.
Buddha

In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur

For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
Michelangelo

Justice is truth in action.
Benjamin Disraeli

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.
James A. Garfield

The sentiment of justice is so natural, and so universally acquired by all mankind, that it seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion.
Voltaire

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.
Plato

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
Thomas Jefferson

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
Dwight David Eisenhower

What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.
Demosthenes

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert Francis Kennedy

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

The foundation of justice is good faith.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Peace is the work of justice indirectly, in so far as justice removes the obstacles to peace; but it is the work of charity (love) directly, since charity, according to its very notion, causes peace.
St. Thomas Aquinas

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham

Peace will not come out of a cash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.
Mahatma Gandhi

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
The Talmud

Every day is a gift from God. At this stage of life, I just try to do three things. Do something good for other people. Don’t do anything stupid myself. Enjoy the day I have been blessed to live.
W. H. Meldrum