John C. Danforth Quotes

I enjoy personal injury cases. I've tried quite a few of those. And, frankly, any kind of litigation that is trouble-shooting, whether it's equities, suits and injunctions, or whatever.

It's sad, the lottery. Good projects get funded by it, but there's an air of desperation about it.

This week I was proud to join with my colleagues to help pass two important, common-sense pieces of legislation that will limit the frivolous lawsuits by trial attorneys and personal injury lawyers that clog our courts and hurt our small businesses.

The glorious uncertainty of the law was a thing well known and complained of, by all ignorant people, but all learned gentleman considered it as its greatest excellency.

It would depend on whether a judge of the Supreme Court came down heads or tails.

If somebody gets injured, they ought to have their day in court.

I have come to regard the courts not as a cathedral but rather as a casino.

Funny how frivolous lawsuits stop being frivolous when it’s you.

No wonder lawyers, who control the legal system, have fought so hard, and with great success, against "no fault" insurance. No fault, no lawsuits. No lawsuits, no lunch.

One goal of law - as we learn in law school from the first day of contracts - is to deter bad behavior.

Tort reform is a complicated subject and not a panacea.

You can never control injuries. Accidents happen; that's just how things go.

The effect of letting someone sue without showing harm is obvious: It makes it really easy to sue.

Civil lawsuits do two important things: they compensate people who are injured by the bad acts of others, and they penalize people and companies for bad behavior.

The law is the law whether you're dealing with a multi-million-pound fraud or a car deal where someone feels diddled because their exhaust falls off on the way home.

And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

Fickle Fortune reigns, and, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains.

Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.

Anything that happens all at once is just as likely to unhappen all at once, you know?

Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible.

I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.

Things don't happen because they're bad or good, else all eggs would be addled or none at all, and at the most it is but six to the dozen. There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.

However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.

Our studies will be forever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance; like travelers, we must take what we can get, and when we can get it - whether it is or is not administered to us in the most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.