Clarence Darrow Quotes
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All men do the best they can. But none meet life honestly and few heroically.
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You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
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The truth is always modern and there never comes a time when it is safe to give it voice.
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I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. 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.
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The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrung from its hostile and unwilling serfs.
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Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
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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.
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Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes has burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
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I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
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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.
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I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.
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Clarence Darrow's examination of William Jennings Bryan at the 1925 Scopes trial Scopes Trial Day 7
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Judge: Do you want Mr. Bryan sworn?
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Hell, that's why they make erasers.
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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.
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History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.
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I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man - public opinion.
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That men should ‘turn the other cheek,’ should ‘love their enemies,’ should ‘resist not evil,’ has ever seemed fine to teach to children, to preach on Sundays, to round a period in a senseless oratorical flight; but it has been taken for granted that these sentiments cannot furnish the real foundation for strong characters or great states. p. 13
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When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I’m beginning to believe it.
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In the great flood of human life that is spawned upon the earth, it is not often that a man is born.
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What of the tale of Balaam's ass speaking to him, probably in Hebrew? Is it true, or is it a fable? Many asses have spoken, and doubtless some in Hebrew, but they have not been that breed of asses. Is salvation to depend on a belief in a monstrosity like this?
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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.
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Pensions are the favors of the powerful, and dangerous to any great intellect. It is only here and there down throughout the ages that a Voltaire is born who does not fall a victim to their blandishments.
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Whatever else he was during his life, he was never dull, and the world forgives almost anything but stupidity.