Clarence Darrow Quotes (1857-1938)

“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.”

“Life is an unpleasant interruption of a peaceful nothingness–and when the interruption is over, you are at peace.”

“This great senseless, wasteful, cruel spawning of life upon the earth! I see not only its pain, but its pleasures, and its joys annoy me more than its sorrows, for I don't want to lose them.”

“If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man. I am quite certain that the more the question of crime and its treatment is studied the less faith men have in punishment.”

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

“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.”

“I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man—public opinion.”

“We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States, and you know it, and that is all.”

“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.”

“This man, our brother, never purposely killed a living thing until he put the pistol to his head. Poor dead dreamer, you are not the first or last mortal to learn the truth [...] I have dreamed my dreams, had my illusions and wakened from my sleep. Why do I not follow him? I do not end it all because the love of life and the shrinking fear of death in all living things stays my hand and my courage fails.”

“Another visitor was a lawyer from Clarence Darrow's office. He had come to warn me that I was hurting my case by my persistent defence of Czolgosz; the man was crazy and I should admit it. "No prominent attorney will accept your defence if you ally yourself with the assassin of the President," he assured me; "in fact, you stand in imminent danger of being held as an accessory to the crime." I demanded to know why Mr. Darrow himself did not come if he was so concerned, but his representative was evasive. He continued to paint my case in sinister colours. My chances of escape were few at best, it seemed, too few for me to allow any sentimentality to aggravate it. Czolgosz was insane, the man insisted; everybody could see it, and, besides, he was a bad sort to have involved me, a coward hiding behind a woman's skirts. His talk was repugnant to me. I informed him that I was not willing to swear away the reason, character, or life of a defenceless human being and that I wanted no assistance from his chief. I had never met Darrow, but I had long known of him as a brilliant lawyer, a man of broad social views, an able writer and lecturer. According to the papers he had interested himself in the anarchists arrested in the raid, especially the Isaaks. It seemed strange that he should send me such reprehensible advice, that he should expect me to join the mad chorus howling for the life of Czolgosz.”

“Clarence Darrow spoke eleven hours at Bill Haywood's trial, and fifty thousand people marched in Boston alone. Roosevelt said Darrow was an undesirable citizen, so we all wore placards saying, "I am an undesirable citizen." Darrow said, "I speak for the poor, for the weak, for the weary, for that long line of men, who in darkness and despair, have borne the labors of the human race."”