"If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill, he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause"
About this Quote
The “three exceptions and a saving clause” is lawyer-speak for self-protection. Exceptions acknowledge political reality (“Yes, but…”) and a saving clause preserves an escape hatch when the text collides with unintended consequences. Morgan isn’t mainly dunking on lawyers as pedants; he’s skewering a modern mindset that confuses sophistication with moral seriousness. The more institutions reward cleverness, the more the clever learn to leave themselves room to maneuver - and the less anyone is willing to be pinned down by a simple “Thou shalt not.”
Context matters: writing in the first half of the 20th century, Morgan watched democratic governance become increasingly technocratic, with professionalism and committees taking pride of place over prophetic clarity. The quip hints at a cultural loss: not that law is bad, but that moral language gets translated into the dialect of liability. A commandment becomes a contract, and a contract is designed to be contested.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: The Executive's Book of Quotations (Julia Vitullo-Martin, J. Robert Moskin, 1994) modern compilationISBN: 9780195078367 · ID: QCUUKOvYh70C
Evidence:
... If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill , he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause . " CHARLES MORGAN , former head of the ACLU ( interview , 1988 ) ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Morgan, Charles. (2026, March 11). If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill, he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-moses-had-gone-to-harvard-law-school-and-spent-142354/
Chicago Style
Morgan, Charles. "If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill, he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause." FixQuotes. March 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-moses-had-gone-to-harvard-law-school-and-spent-142354/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If Moses had gone to Harvard Law School and spent three years working on the Hill, he would have written the Ten Commandments with three exceptions and a saving clause." FixQuotes, 11 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-moses-had-gone-to-harvard-law-school-and-spent-142354/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026.
