Quotes by Frederick Pollock

• It is strange how little harm bad codes do.
• The lawyer has not reached the height of his vocation who does not find therein... scope for a peculiar but genuine artistic function.
• Yet when one suspects that a man knows something about life that one hasn't heard before one is uneasy until one has found out what he has to say.
• The oldest theory of contract is I think negative.
• So far I go with the Socialists as to think it a pretty general rule that, where monopoly is necessary, it is better in public hands.
• Our lady the Common Law is a very wise old lady though she still has something to learn in telling what she knows.
• Not that pleading can be taken as a test, for the forms of action, notably Debt, ignore the fundamental difference between duties imposed by law and duties created by the will of the parties.
• Medieval justice was a quaint thing.
• It cannot be assumed that equity was following common law whenever they agreed, any more than the converse.
• If you deny that any principles of conduct at all are common to and admitted by all men who try to behave reasonably - well, I don't see how you can have any ethics or any ethical background for law.
• I have not heard that even the New York abortion has done very much in the States where it has been enacted.
• Have you ever found any logical reason why mutual promises are sufficient consideration for one another (like the two lean horses of a Calcutta hack who can only just stand together)? I have not.
• Crabbed and obscure definitions are of no use beyond a narrow circle of students, of whom probably every one has a pet one of his own.
• Consider the Essay as a political pamphlet on the Revolution side, and the fact that it was the Whig gospel for a century, and you will see its working merit.
• But it is strange how many rational beings believe the ultimate truths of the universe to be reducible to patterns on a blackboard.
• The practice of the law is a perfectly distinct art.
• It is odd how learned persons fail to see that new terms and definitions are apt to mean new doubts and litigation.