Quotes by Attorneys

Whether we call it a job or a career work is more than just something we do. It is a part of who we are.
Anita Hill
When television is good nothing is better. But when television is bad nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your TV set and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
Newton Minow
The person who can combine frames of reference and draw connections between ostensibly unrelated points of view is likely to be the one who makes the creative breakthrough.
Denise Shekerjian
Sometimes ... God answers our prayers in the way our parents do who reply to the pleas of their children with "Not just now" or "I'll have to think about that for a little while."
Roy M. Pearson
Sometimes ... God answers our prayers in the way our parents do who reply to the pleas of their children with "Not just now" or "I'll have to think about that for a little while."
Roy M. Pearson
Try to forget yourself in the service of others. For when we think too much of ourselves and our own interests we easily become despondent. But when we work for others our efforts return to bless us.
Sidney Powell
There is nothing to be gained by waiting for a better situation. You see where you are and you do what you can with that.
Jacob K. Javits
My mother always says that indifference is the greatest cruelty.
Mark T. Mustian
The most important thing of all was not the poverty of its ess
David Drake
He said when the Lord made people He made them all the same for starters. But life marks people. If you know the way, you can read them like maps.
Andrew Vachss
The problem with all politicians is that they are human.
Steven Ivy Attorney Entrepreneur
The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don’t vote.
Andrew Vachss
Nothing’s boring if it’s in your soul…
David Drake
If God wanted teenagers to be abstinent, puberty would begin at twenty.
Jacob M. Appel
Let your inner DORK shine through.
Rachel Renée Russell
That was the heart of the problem: every choice made sense from some vantage point.
Jacob M. Appel
When libertarian sentiments take a populist form, it looks like this: a mix of anger, fear, anti-intellectualism, and fierce government hostility. Welcome to the Tea Party movement.
David Niose
Libertarian opponents of anarchy are attacking a straw man. Their arguments are usually utilitarian in nature and amount to "but anarchy won’t work" or "we need the (things provided by the) state." But these attacks are confused at best, if not disingenuous. To be an anarchist does not mean you think anarchy will "work" (whatever that means); nor that you predict it will or "can" be achieved. It is possible to be a pessimistic anarchist, after all. To be an anarchist only means that you believe that aggression is not justified, and that states necessarily employ aggression. And, therefore, that states, and the aggression they necessarily employ, are unjustified. It’s quite simple, really. It’s an ethical view, so no surprise it confuses utilitarians.Accordingly, anyone who is not an anarchist must maintain either: (a) aggression is justified; or (b) states (in particular, minimal states) do not necessarily employ aggression.
N. Stephan Kinsella
The goal of a true family is not that their children follow in their footsteps, but that their children surpass them in all ways.
Andrew Vachss
Ask Gandhi, and eye for an eye makes us both blind.....ask an engineer, and the numbers don't lie - the first to strike wins.
Steven Ivy Attorney Entrepreneur
That’s Manhattan today—all the money goes up top, while the infrastructure wastes away from neglect. The famous skyline is a cheap trick now, a sleight-of-hand to draw your eye from the truth, as illusory as a bodybuilder with osteoporosis.
Andrew Vachss
a gang of unpredictable ruffians by day who turned to enthralling storytellers after dark. "I would sometimes join them, and listen for a great part of the night to some of the finest fairy tales and most romantic legends it has ever been my fortune to hear.
Russell S. Bonds
Maybe that is the greatest of wonders: that we can be shaped so much by those we've known closely, and equally by those we've never known at all - and that we too can change the world long after we've left it.
Jacob M. Appel
The painter knew the mirror lied. And the canvas told the truth.
Thomas Lloyd Qualls
Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.
Jacob M. Appel
When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain...
Wayne J. Keeley
The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered...We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.
Elizabeth Edwards
Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it.
Jacob M. Appel
Even a clock that's broken is right twice a day.
Marcia Clark
Answer all the questions. Question all the answers.
Laurie Gray
The worst place to be is in the middle. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.
Andrew Vachss
The more bullets flying, the less accurate each individual slug has to be.
Andrew Vachss
A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press.
Andrew Vachss
A dog is like a person—he needs a job and a family to be what he’s meant to be.
Andrew Vachss
Didn’t we all grow up understanding that bribes and payoffs - - by whatever name or rationale - - were bad. And that people were supposed to be the focal point of society, not money?
Ray Bourhis
It’s over,” said Carmona to the town’s men at the casa alcaldía (city hall). “Word is that the United States Flag is waving in Guánica, Coamo and at El Morro and San Cristóbal Castles in San Juan. Puerto Rico is now United States territory.”“Another transition!” Manuel sighed. “What will this bring?
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
¡Ay, las faldas!” (“Oh, the skirts!”) he sighed, shaking his head and winking with a mischievous smile. While admitting women were his “Achilles heel,” Antonio, as many young men of the times did, also disclaimed responsibility, as though he had no control over his behavior or desires. Loving the opposite sex was “the natural thing to do for a man,” he thought.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
As the children left, Antonio shifted his gaze towards his father and gently waved at his family, while they returned the gesture.With half a smile and a tight lip, Antonio’s green eyes spoke, “Adiós” (“Good-bye”).Then, he turned and walked towards the green metal door of the steam cargo vessel that swallowed him away.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
All Americans were immigrants at one point or another,” he explained in his letters to his parents. Even his father Manuel migrated to Puerto Rico. Manuel was deemed a Peninsular, an immigrant from Spain, and sometimes even the Puerto Rican-born, the criollos, resented the Spanish-born newcomers. Manuel was familiar with being singled out, although not quite as much as Antonio felt while in New York. “It is amazing how people tend to forget their past,” Antonio wrote to his parents, surprised. “I recall what you told me about Maestro Rafael, Papá, when he said to you ‘never forget your history.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
Her heart now pounding, a strange feeling of combined fear and happiness invaded her. She took a deep breath. Her lungs filled with fresh air. An invigorating rush of electricity all over her body overcame her. “So, is this how falling in love feels?” she thought.She knew the answer.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
Do you know who Samuel Langhorne Clemens is, Antonio?” Bessie asked.“No, chood I?” he said. “He is best known as Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” she said.“I have herd of the story, but I hav not red the booc,” he said.“Well, you should read it,” she said. “It is excellent reading. An American classic. Mark Twain worked in Schoharie for a while,” she said.“Is that so?” he said.“Yes, he worked as a brakeman on the Schoharie railroad station on Depot Street the winter of 1879, three years after he wrote his famous book,” Bessie said.“Why would he do that, a famos author?” Antonio asked.“A self-published author, I should add.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
Antonio could not stop thinking about Dean Fiero’s words during his welcoming speech, “Look to your left; now to your right. One of you will not be here in 1915!” These words were used to intimidate freshman law students to draw their attention to the importance of being diligent in their forthcoming studies. They still are.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
He woke up to knocks on his door. “Just a minute!” he said out loud. “I’m coming!”He got up and straightened himself as he opened the door.“Besi!” he said, overcome with emotion.He held her and never let go.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. - Sixth Amendment, United States Constitution
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …- Fifth Amendment, United States Constitution
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
Antonio’s will was cursed. Not once, but twice.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
What to do now, Father? I am going to die like a killer, and I do not even remember killing.”“You can pray, my son. You are in the hands of God now,” said the good priest.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
What you are about to witness is a blot upon the civilization of the twentieth century."- Sing Sing Deputy Warden Spencer Miller, Addressing Antonio Pontón’s execution witnesses on January 7, 1916
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
The Porto Ricans at Harvard University believe that the crime was a horrible one and it should be punished, but death penalty would add to, and not detract from, its horrors,” the Harvard students wrote. One of the student signatures on the letter was by Pedro Albizu y Campos who would later become a Puerto Rican promoter of ideals for the island’s independence from the United States.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
On Thanksgiving Day, during our family gathering, we pray you to have mercy on Antonio Pontón …
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
Dear Governor Whitman, … Our father is not a simple criminal. … He was harassed by more ideas than his mind could stand. …
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
The physiological effects of an electrocution are severe and painful. Besides launching the body into violent convulsions, the electrocution of a human being causes massive destruction throughout the body.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
There is always hope for a reprieve, my friend,” Stielow said. “You have to get the governor to pardon you if the courts fail on you. This is an unlikely thing, although possible. The last thing you hold on to ‘til the last second is hope. Hope is what keeps us doomsmen sane, for the most part. A miracle.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
Antonio looked down, silent, as Shillitoni kept talking. There he was, among cold-blooded killers, talking to a gangster. A much different picture than a year prior.“Can’t trust priests, can’t trust cops either. Can’t trust nobody! Whaddaya say?”“I am not like you,” Antonio said. “I’m not like them, either. That’s what I say. I am not a cold-blooded killer!”“Ya killed, you a killa! There’s not’ng more to it!” Shillitoni said.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
The Death House back then was a self-contained unit, with its own hospital, kitchen, exercise yard and visiting room. The cells were inadequate, dark, and did not have proper sanitary facilities or ventilation. One window and skylight furnished the ventilation and light of the entire unit. Twelve cells were on the lower tier, six on each side, facing each other, with a narrow corridor between them. Five cells were located in an upper tier. There was an area the prisoners called the Dance Hall that housed a prisoner to be executed on his last day. The narrow corridor connected the Dance Hall to the execution room, where the Electric Chair resided. The prisoners named this corridor the Last Mile or the Green Mile, because this was the last walk a prisoner would take all the way to the small green riveted door at the end of the corridor, on his way to the execution room.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
In Sing Sing Prison, in a ghastly white room stands a chair. Its parts are heavy joinings of oak, riveted and screwed together; its strong legs fastened to the floor with teeth and claws of steel. It bites into the marrow of men with fangs of fire. For this is the faldstool of bloody human justice, the prayer-chair of man’s vengeance upon man. Into it are strapped ... men who have killed other men. In it, for a high moral purpose, erring human lives are shocked across the barrier into night and the grave. - Edward H. Smith (1918)
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
Pardon me for this resolution … I know that this will be a disgrace that I bring to my people, but I cannot help it. Love is the blame for it. I go in peace ... pray for me ... good-bye all.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
¡Hundieron el Maine!” said Manuel to his wife Etervina, as he read the newspaper on February 16, 1898. “They sank the Maine!
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
SHE RESEARCHED WHEN everyone slept. In the dead silence, her mind worked with more clarity. No interruptions, no worries. Sometimes she even imagined that her ancestors guided her. That they reached out from the past to share their stories. “Hocus Pocus!” she thought, smiling. Her inside joke was a source of inspiration. But her imagination was not far-fetched.My second cousin, twice removed, is a family historian. She is also a lawyer. And this is why I chose her. I needed her to do me a favor. I chose her, although she is a business lawyer and not a criminal lawyer. That was fine by me. It’s not like my lawyers did a superb job at defending me. I was wrongfully executed.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini
THEY CALLED HIM “Ponce de León” because he acted as though he could conquer anything and anyone. He enchanted every young woman that came his way with piropos (pick-up lines) and clever sweet talk. “Has spring started? I just saw the first flower!” Antonio whispered as he walked by a group of blushing young ladies, tipping off his white Panama hat as a silent ‘How do you do?’ He was never at a loss for words. “What are you doing out this morning? Don’t you know that stars only come out at night?” was one of his favorite lines. And he had many. On a good day.
Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini