Joe Jamail Quotes

We've got some well-run corporations by some well-intended people who do it right.

I was taught that a lawyer was supposed to be a custodian of the community's legal and ethical sense.

I love the system. Let me tell you why. People love it ... The people, by and large, have great respect for our law and our system ... Why do you think they go to that courthouse instead of killing each other in the streets, taking the law into their own hands?

If you are not emotionally involved, your client is not getting your best effort.

I didn't know who she was, but I knew she was hungry, so I started handing out $100 bills and called the office and told them to bring me a bunch more. Then I had my cousin's store deliver a bunch of smoked ham and turkeys. I mean, these people are hungry and living under a bridge.

Medical research is needed, and I just saw there was a need for help that the government - state or federal - was not spending the taxpayers' money on helping people get through college.

I can't describe the feeling I got the first time I won a jury award for an injured person.

The feeling of being accepted and acknowledgement and recognition and fame - I'm vain like everybody else. The feeling of achievement that I've helped the poor or somebody in need far outweighs the money.

Do you know what the root of mediation is? Mediocrity!

I don't want corporate America to think they can continue their duplicitous double-dealing.

I don't think I'm a good ol' boy. Honestly, the last thing I am is a redneck. I like silk sheets, fancy cars, beautiful women, good whiskey.

I love my wife. She had money when I didn't.

What did I know about lawyering? I just thought it was another way to stay in Austin for another three years.

By not trying the small cases, the lawyers don't get the courtroom experience. So when the huge, bet-the-company cases come along, there are only a handful of trial lawyers who can handle it. That's why these big corporations still call us old-timers every day.

There are more pompous, arrogant, self-centered, mediocre-type people running corporate America who should be sent out on some postal route delivering mail.

It has been pointed out to me, more than once, that for someone who chose a profession steeped in procedure and protocol, I had little use for either.

It's not a bad thing fighting for equality and helping the poor. It's not a bad thing to have on your professional tombstone: 'He believed in equality and he helped the poor.'

I sent people to the penitentiary as fast as I could, never thinking about whether they deserved it.

I happen to have a giant ego, an admission that will not shock my close friends or critics. I am not uncomfortable in saying that because the ego of a man often gets great things done.

We can still do good for others and do good for ourselves. I would wither and die, truthfully. I need to be somewhere where the light's on me.

I didn't do too well until my second year, when I realized that there were no right or wrong answers and that my professors were interested only in how well I could develop an argument.

For every dollar we have given to athletics, we have given about 27 to higher education or medical research.

I'm a very egotistical person.

It's a great feeling knowing you've helped someone. That's what I've spent my life doing and my practice.

The Depression did more to me than being a little Lebanese kid did.

For me, being a lawyer means to help those in need.