Quotes
Quotes about Law
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.
To say that a farm boy knows how to milk a cow is to say that we can send him out to the barn with an empty pail and expect him to return with milk. To say that a criminologist understands crime is not to say that we can send him out with a grant or a law and expect him to return with a lower crime rate. He is more likely to return with a report on why he has not succeeded yet, and including the inevitable need for more money, a larger staff, more sweeping powers, etc.
The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.
Expecting a carjacker or rapist or drug pusher to care that his possession or use of a gun is unlawful is like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces. - "Usenet posting in talk.politics.guns".
What is hateful to thyself do not do to another. That is the whole Law, the rest is Commentary.
This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally. (US District Judge in commenting on the Fox network lawsuit against Al Franken's book).
Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.
Justice is incidental to law and order.
Equality of the general rules of law and conduct, however, is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty. Not only has liberty nothing to do with any other sort of equality, but it is even bound to produce inequality in many respects. This is the necessary result and part of the justification of individual liberty: if the result of individual liberty did not demonstrate that some manners of living are more successful than others, much of the case for it would vanish.
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict which each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
That possession was the strongest tenure of the law.
Pray, n:. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Father! no prophet's laws I seek,-- Thy laws in Nature's works appear;-- I own myself corrupt and weak, Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear.
For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished that the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure, But the main thing is, does it hold good measure Heaven soon sets right all other matters!
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
Laws and institutions are constantly tending to gravitate. Like clocks, they must be occasionally cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time.
Progress is The law of life, man is not Man as yet.
The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
So that every man lawfully ordained must bring a bow which hath two strings, a title of present right and another to provide for future possibility or chance.
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
Our minds can work for us or against us at any given moment. We can learn to accept and live with the natural psychological laws that govern us, understanding how to flow with life rather than struggle against it. We can return to our natural state of contentment.
To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.
