Memorable Anecdote
In his autobiography Fair Fights & Foul, he relays an anecdote from Clarence Darrow on how to build a successful legal career.
- PDF in cloud here.
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Text of Arnold anecdote:
Clarence Darrow, whom I knew and admired, once told me of an
occasion when he was asked to state for a magazine article the
principal cause of his success. He asked the interviewer what the
other successful people whose names were to appear in the article
had thought was the cause of their success. The interviewer in-
formed Darrow that most of them had said that their success was
due. to hard work.
“Put me down for that too,” said Darrow.
He continued, “I was
brought up on a farm. When I was a young man, on a very hot day
I was engaged in distributing and packing down the hay which a
horse-propelled stacker was constantly dumping on top of me. By
noon I was completely exhausted. That afternoon I left the farm,
never to return, and I haven’t done a day of hard work since.”
Darrow’s concept was accurate. I would advise any young man
who has an allergy toward hard work to train himself for the law,
where he can achieve reasonable affluence by writing, talking, and
thinking. Thus he will give the appearance of working hard, for
the hours are long and the law appears to the layman to be abstruse
and difficult. But, as I have observed before, legal learning
is the art of making simple things complicated, which should be an
easy task for anyone. Paradoxically, the great lawyer is frequently
one who can make simple and intelligible matters which lawyers
and judges regard as complex.
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A 1974 one-man play about Darrow by actor Henry Fonda streams on YouTube, here.
