95 Quotes by David Boies

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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