"Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage"

In this quote, Ambrose Bierce brilliantly catches the essence of litigation, referring to it as a machine that transforms those who enter it. The example comparing a person to a pig and the result to a sausage stresses the dehumanizing and transformative nature of the legal process. By getting in litigation, individuals undergo a system that grinds them down, strips them of their originality, and molds them into a standardized end product. Bierce's choice of words reveals the severe truth of how suits can lower people to simple items, fundamentally changing their identities and leaving them decreased in the end.