Boies Quotes

#1. Like everyone, I was a huge fan of David Boies, and from what I knew about him, I thought he might 'get' me. So I sent him an email. I said I want to practice law but that I didn't want to stop writing and I asked if there was any way I could practice law for him.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#2. So I don't blame Boies for the decision of the Court at all.

Vincent Bugliosi

#3. In any profession, whether it's teachers or doctors or lawyers, the more we say we're not going to evaluate those people on the merits, I think that's when the profession goes into decline.

David Boies

#4. We're now segregating our schools based on economics; we're segregating our schools based on where a child's parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people's opportunity as racial segregation did.

David Boies

#5. We're lawyers. We present the arguments, and the court sorts out the merits.

David Boies

#6. Public office is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Boies Penrose

#7. Most people are balancing 10 or 20 priorities. I have two. My family and my work.

David Boies

#8. It's a matter of priorities. Do you want to win, or would you like to sleep? Do you want to win, or would you like to take a day off?

David Boies

#9. But I'd say my best boss was Tom Barr, who was a partner at Cravath, Swain & Moore in the 1960s. It's because I learned so much from him.

David Boies

#10. It's terribly important that we extend the promise of equality that the Supreme Court and that the district court articulated in the DOMA case and in the Perry case to all Americans in all 50 states.

David Boies

#11. It was important for the Supreme Court to say it's a matter of constitutional law that everyone is equal, to say everyone is entitled to the dignity that comes from being married to the person you love.

David Boies

#12. I win virtually every case I should win, and I win a number of cases that people think I shouldn't.

David Boies

#13. You wouldn't go to a hospital, you wouldn't go to a law firm where the doctors and lawyers were not retained on merit: where they all had tenure regardless of competence. Parents feel the same way about schools that they send their children to.

David Boies

#14. Once I take a case, I'm stuck with it.

David Boies

#15. When you think of Napster, you think of music. But the first thing that struck me was that this was an important case not only for the music industry but for the whole Internet.

David Boies

#16. Obviously I'm a lawyer; I like to have cases.

David Boies

#17. I made a penny for each paper delivered every day, plus 2 cents for Sunday papers. I had 120 customers. For a 10-year-old kid in the 1940s, that was a lot of money.

David Boies

#18. It is human nature to favor individuals and institutions who we know or for whom we feel responsible.

David Boies

#19. All physical and economic tests that may be devised are worthless if the immigrant, through racial or other inherently antipathetic conditions, cannot be more or less readily assimilated ...

Boies Penrose

#20. We must bring the rule of law to its full fruition in the United States, and when we do, we will have achieved the goals and rhetoric of our Founding Fathers.

David Boies

#21. One of the things that the court held in Brown v. Board of Education is that government can't impose a badge of inferiority on some of its citizens. Yet that is exactly what Proposition 8 does with respect to gay and lesbian couples in California.

David Boies

#22. I was a paper boy, beginning the summer between my fourth-grade and fifth-grade years.

David Boies

#23. I don't really believe in moral victories. You can have them when you're dealing with public opinion, but in litigation, you want to win the case. I want to win.

David Boies

#24. While I agree completely that attracting good teachers is difficult, and we need to spend more time doing that - in part by paying them more money - I don't think there's any evidence for the idea that somehow tenure attracts good teachers. In fact, I think the evidence is to the contrary.

David Boies

#25. It is easy to be accurate if you have the freedom to be complicated, and it is very easy to be simple if you have the freedom to shade the truth. What's hard is to be simple and very accurate, and that takes work to figure out what are the simple truths that are going to sustain your case.

David Boies

#26. Napster's only alleged liability is for contributory or vicarious infringement. So when Napster's users engage in noncommercial sharing of music, is that activity copyright infringement? No.

David Boies

#27. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.

David Boies

#28. The Audio Home Recording Act directly says that noncommercial copying by consumers is lawful.

David Boies

#29. Here you have a new technology, and if that technology is going to work, you must allow people to provide central indexes of the data. It's just like a newspaper that publishes classified ads.

David Boies

#30. Unlike people of my generation, my children and my grandchildren have grown up living with, knowing, people who were outwardly gay and lesbian. And they have learned that they're just like us ... And when you see that they're just like us, the rationale for discrimination melts away.

David Boies