More Food for Thought

Several people have sent me items that relate to students studying law.  So, I thought I would share them with you.  Natalie Tarenko, Texas Tech School of Law's Writing Specialist, sent me two offerings:

• Repetition is the mother of learning.  Russian proverb
• Skill is not won by chance.  Growth is not the sport of circumstance.  Skill comes by training; and training, persistent and unceasing, is transmuted into habit.  The reaction is adjusted ever to the action.  What goes out of us as effort comes back to us as character.  The alchemy never fails.  'Let no youth,' says James, 'have any anxiety about the upshot of his education whatever the line of it may be.  If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself.  He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out . . . .'  The main quotation is from a 1925 commencement speech at Albany Law School by Justice Cardozo titled "The Game of the Law."  Cardozo attributes the inner quotation to James, probably Henry or William.

Norman Otto Stockmeyer, Professor Emeritus, from Thomas M. Cooley Law School shared with me the following quotes from his TWEN site:

• Writing is thinking made visible.  Joe Kimble
• The beginning of knowledge is learning to call things by their proper names.  Chinese proverb
• The point of a question is to get you to think, not simply to answer it.  What Smart Students Know
• You are entitled to your own opinions.  You are not entitled to your own facts.  Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
• Assumpsit happens (Prof. Stockmeyer teaches Contracts.)
• If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it.  John Searle
• To know the law is not merely to understand the words, but as well their force and effect.  Justinian
• We do brain surgery here....You enter with a skull full of mush, and leave thinking like a lawyer.  Professor Kingsfield in Paper Chase
• Teachers open the door.  You enter by yourself.  Chinese proverb
• There are no answers without questions.  Fidelity Investments advertisement
• "Learn" is an active verb.  Dennis Tonsing's 1,000 Days to the Bar - But the Practice of Law Begins Now
• Out of the facts arises the law.  Old adage

No doubt, all of you could add more sayings to the collection!  (Amy Jarmon)