Gavel Quotes & Sayings

If people had gavels, there would be no wars. If every person in the world had a gavel and could bang it and get everyone's attention right away and make their displeasure known, I believe the level of actual violence in the world would just disappear to practically nothing. — Fran Lebowitz

My thoughts are stars I can't fanthom into constellations. — John Green

It's time to give the gavel back to God, we were never meant to be judges. — Evinda Lepins

What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument ... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda. — Dan Quayle

The Samurai lived by a code of honor, not unlike the code that you live by. It's called the Bushido. It was never written down; was always something the Samurai knew, and it was handed down from one warrior to another. One of the tenets of the code is about justice. Not the pounding of a gavel on the bench of some judge who's been appointed to pass judgment on people by some politician. No, malaka, this concept of justice is what you feel in your bones: to die when it is right and to strike when it is right. — Kenneth Eade

If I swung the gavel the way I swung that golf club, the nation would be in a helluva mess. — Tip O'Neill

From the beginning, we promised folks that they'll see whatever event we cover in its entirety, from gavel to gavel - whether it's the House of Representatives or the Senate. That's the whole reason for being. — Brian Lamb

Judges in Texas swing the gavel with one hand and take money with the other. — Craig McDonald

I loved being a judge, and sometimes I miss the power of the gavel, but this is a lot more fun. — Catherine Crier

Judgment is easy: it is black and white, as brutal as a gavel strike. — Luanne Rice

Art with a big "A" is for museums, galleries, critics, and collectors. art with a small "a" is for the rest of us. Art is a business, an industry, a racket. art is about passion, love, life, humanity - everything that is truly valuable. Art is sold, resold, put under the gavel, and insured up the wazoo. art with a small "a" is not a product. It's a point of view. It's a way of life. Art is made by trained professionals and experts. art is made by accountants, farmers, and stay-at-home moms at restaurant tables, in parking lots, and laundry rooms. Art takes Art School and Talent and years of Suffering and Sacrifice. art just takes desire and 15 minutes a day. You may not be an Artist. Big whoop. But I know you can make art - with a wonderful, expressive, teeny, tiny a. — Danny Gregory

My other hobby, because I just love any job with a gavel, is auctioneer. And I so often have presided over charity auctions in New York that many years ago Sotheby's sent me my own gavel. Now, the Sotheby's gavel is infinitely more elegant
it came in a little velvet bag, with "Sotheby's" inscribed in gold. It hangs in my library. I feel that everyone has occasion to use a gavel at various times everyday, they just don't think of it. — Fran Lebowitz

This isn't a courtroom, pal," I said to Nelson, "this is the gutter. No fancy robes, no platitudes engraved in marble, no brass railing dividing the sides. This is the streets and the alleys. this is the Chicago we really live in. Here justice isn't dispensed with a wooden gavel, it's taken with your bare hands. It may be Tubby's world, a part of it, but it's also August Jansen's world, and my world, and yours. Darrow's a great man but this work comes after the fact, after the real battles of life are fought. Lawyers and judges pick up the pieces after the dust settles. Their job is to make sense of what's happened, not make it happen. That occurs in the gutter where blood and bone and horse manure and coal dust and sweat and fear blend and roil. In the end you either have hope or sewage. It can go either way, but it goes on. — James Conroy

What will I die with in my hand?
A paintbrush (for houses), an M15
a hammer or ax, a book a gavel,
a candlestick
tiptoeing upstairs.
What will I hold or will I
be caught with this usual thing
that I want to be my heart but
it is my brain and I turn it
over and over and over. — Jim Harrison

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell asleep during Obama's speech. She woke up with the other justices drawing a gavel on her face. — Conan O'Brien

The most precious contribution we can make here on Earth is to create the lives we want to be living, communicating in all ways, to everyone around us, that success is really possible. — Susan Collins

He paused. Perhaps he had a son. He intoned their names, and then he said, "I sentence you to death. The sentence shall be carried out by firing squad, at the customary time, in the execution yard of this prison, one week from today." Then Fabio asked, "Why a week?" as coolly and with as much detachment as a customer in a bank wanting to know why his funds had not cleared. The court president did not object to this unceremonious interruption, for the sentence was severe enough to cover any and all offenses, past, present, future, and imagined. His tone was friendly and somehow reassuring. "We need a little extra time for your friend Grigi." At this, the soldiers of the 19th River Guard, now condemned, began to laugh, and the gavel struck. — Mark Helprin

John Boehner chose a huge gavel. I think somebody's compensating for his small government. — Stephen Colbert

You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself.
Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self.
Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy.
Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself.
Otherwise, cede your gavel. — Vera Nazarian

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand. — Robert A. Caro

If you kill a black man, the world is silent. You can hear a garage door opening from twenty blocks away. You can pick up a pay phone and only hear the dial tone. Shooting stars sound exactly like the soft laughter of a little girl in Gasworks Park. If you kill a white man, the world erupts with noise: fireworks, sirens, a gavel pounding a desk, the slamming of doors. — Sherman Alexie

I believe in things that move people, if the audience isn't deeply caught up and moved to either laughter or tears then I don't think it is theater. — Estelle Parsons

Don't judge me. You wanna judge me, put on a black gown and get a gavel. Get in line with the rest of them that's about to judge me. I got court dates every other month. It's me against the world - that's how I feel. — Lil' Wayne

You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,
but what am I to the truth I feebly utter? — Henry David Thoreau

Children are the greatest sufferers from outgrown theologies. — Luther Burbank

To the somnambulist, sleep-walking may seem more pleasant and less hazardous than wakeful walking, but the latter is the wiser mode of locomotion in the congested traffic of a modern community. It is about time to abandon judicial somnambulism. — Jerome Frank