Anthony Amsterdam Quotes

Make no mistake about it: Law school is not a bastion of intellectual discourse.

I got into law school to supplement my business background. I'm not planning to practice law.

I soon found law school an unmitigated bore.

There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.

Long-term I would love to go to law school.

In law school, I earned the respect of professors and served on the editorial board of 'The Yale Law Journal.'

We in universities are not in the democracy business. What we do, when we're doing it, is teach and learn.

At Cardozo, study of law is part of a larger culture. You can get a law degree and make a good living, but it is best that you do that having studied the discipline for its own inherent merit, because you love studying.

There's a misconception about Barack Obama as a former constitutional law professor. First of all, there are plenty of professors who are 'legal relativists.' They tend to view legal principles as relative to whatever they're trying to achieve.

What do lawyers learn in law school? They learn to win... What we've got to start thinking about is how do we solve problems.

I was a trial lawyer. At the same time, I was a teacher. I taught about the political and social content of film for American University. Then I left and became a teacher at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I taught about the political and social content of film, but I also taught a course in law for undergraduates.

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

At some point in their life, everyone thinks they should go to law school. You may in fact think you want to go to law school now.

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.

When I arrived at Harvard, I wanted to design a course in political theory that would have interested me, back when I was started out, in a way that the standard things didn't.

I give off rather mixed messages about the law. On the one hand, I can honestly say I don't miss working in a law office. On the other hand I do enjoy watching the law and while the profession may have its problems, I have sold zillions of books out of magnifying them.

A justice is not like a law professor, who might say, 'This is my theory... and this is what I'm going to be faithful to and consistent with,' and in twenty years will look back and say, 'I had a consistent theory of the First Amendment as applied to a particular area.'

For me, law school was a time of joy and hope. Joy in learning my way around the law - learning how to orbit a problem and to ask myself hard questions and to be asked hard questions. Hope that I could be of some use, to be part of the greater good - to make the world a little bit better.

One of the things I was taught in law school is that I'd never be able to think the same again - that being a lawyer is something that's part of who I am as an individual now.

I went to law school after college.

The most important function of the university in an age of reason is to protect reason from itself.

Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.

I think our vision heretofore has been and should continue to be to have Cardozo be the kind of law school that we can be proud of. I would like to see it gain recognition as one of the three best law schools in New York City.

Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they're here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas.

The truth is that I'd always wanted to go to law school.