Will Rogers Quotes

The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.

But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.

Everytime a lawyer writes something, he is not writing for posterity, he is writing something so that endless others of his craft can make a living out of trying to figure out what he said. Course perhaps he really haden't said anything, that's what makes it so hard to explain.

Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.

I am utterly opposed to all equivocation or obscure expressions in our public acts. We are bound to say plainly what we mean to say. If we mean negotiation and compromise, let us say it distinctly and plainly instead of sending to the President a resolution on which he may put whatever interpretation he pleases.

Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?

When I write legally, I try to write very plain, very vanilla, very clear.

Ambiguity is very interesting in writing; it's not very interesting in science.

If somebody writes clearly, you can pretty much tell immediately if something is shallow or deep, whereas if they write with all this duckweed on the surface, you can't tell if the stream is one inch deep or a hundred fathoms.

I've simplified much more in my writing. I say what I've got to say, not in metaphor.

We should not write so that it is possible for [the reader] to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding... that's where things get sticky.

Complexity is the enemy of clarity

Those who don't say what they mean will live and die by their own sword.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

"Simple" is a tricky word, it can mean a lot of things. To us, it just means clear. That doesn't always mean total reduction, or minimalism - sometimes, to make things clearer, you have to add a step.

The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.

Law Number IX: Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent possible to make trivial ideas profound ... Q.E.D.

Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

I don't like things to be handed to me on a plate; that means nothing. I like to go through layers of unraveling and every time I listen to something, it makes me feel something different. Now I'm aware of the conflict that's going on, but at the time I just let what was happening happen.

My style is ambiguous and lucid.

My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.

Simplicity is simple. Perhaps this sounds redundant. But it's true, and it's important.