 |
 | ""A government of laws and not of men." Adams published articles in
1774 in the Boston, Massachusetts, Gazette using the pseudonym
"Novanglus." In this paper he credited James Harrington with expressing
the idea this way. Harrington described government as "the empire of laws
and not of men" in his 1656 work, The Commonwealth of Oceana, p. 35
(1771). The phrase gained wider currency when Adams used it in the
Massachusetts Constitution, Bill of Rights, article 30 (1780).?Works, vol.
4, p. 230." | |
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John Adams
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| "A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right
in it." | |
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Henry Ward Beecher
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| "A man ought warily to begin charges which once begun will
continue." | |
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Francis Bacon
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| "A state is better governed which has but few laws, And those laws
strictly observed." | |
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René Descartes
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| "As laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so there
is need of good manners that laws may be maintained." | |
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Niccoló Machiavelli
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| "Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." | |
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Edmund Burke
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| "Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous
obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest
duty." | |
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Thomas Jefferson
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| "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." | |
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Aleister Crowley
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| "For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should
be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with
subhuman inefficiency." | |
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Eric Ambler
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| "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while
bad people will find a way around the laws." | |
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Plato
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| "I am glad I am an optimist. The pessimist is half-licked before he
starts. The optimist has won half the battle, the most important half that
applies to himself, when he begins his approach to a subject with the
proper mental attitude. The optimist may not understand, or if he
understands he may not agree with, prevailing ideas; but he believes, yes,
knows, that in the long run and in due course there will prevail whatever
is right and best." | |
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Thomas A. Buckner
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| "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so
effective as their stringent execution." | |
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Ulysses S. Grant
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| "If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is
at an end." | |
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Herbert Clark Hoover
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| "If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law
respectable." | |
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Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis
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| "If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for
the law." | |
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Sir Winston Churchill
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| "It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral
law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe
that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no
distinction between good and evil." | |
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Anatole France
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| "It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark
of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt
increases." | |
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Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
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| "It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice
alive." | |
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Earl Warren
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| "Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice ? under the reign
of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and
responsibility ? that every person will attain his real worth and the true
dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind
will achieve ? slowly, no doubt, but certainly ? God?s design for the
orderly and peaceful progress of humanity." | |
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Claude Frédéric Bastiat
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| "Law: An ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has
care of the community." | |
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Saint Thomas Aquinas
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| "Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a
nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a
people." | |
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Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
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| "Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little
creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone
entangled in it." | |
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William Shenstone
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| "Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons: those
that make them, those that execute them, and those that suffer if they
break them." | |
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Halifax
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| "Laws do not persuade just because they threaten." | |
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Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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| "Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law." | |
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Oliver Goldsmith
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| "Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom
executed." | |
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Benjamin Franklin
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| "Laws were made to be broken." | |
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Christopher North
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| "LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of
as a sausage." | |
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Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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| "Mastering the lawless science of our law,? That codeless myriad of
precedent, That wilderness of single instances." | |
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Lord Alfred Tennyson
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| "Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely
given them little." | |
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Dr. Samuel Johnson
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| "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are
but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is
what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against
it." | |
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| "Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who
make the law." | |
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Sophocles
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| "Nothing can tell us so much about the general lawlessness of
humanity as a perfect acquaintance with our own immoderate behavior. If we
would think over our own impulses, we would recognize in our own souls the
guiding principle of all vices which we reproach in other people; and if
it is not in our very actions, it will be present at least in our
impulses. There is no malice that self-love will not offer to our spirits
so that we may exploit any occasion, and there are few people virtuous
enough not to be tempted." | |
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Marquise Magdeleine de Sablé
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| "One, a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm; Two, a robot must obey the orders
given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the
First Law; Three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such
protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws." | |
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Isaac Asimov
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| "Petty laws breed great crimes." | |
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Ouida
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| "Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions; ... that
laws were like cobwebs, ? for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell
into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it
broke through them and was off." | |
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Diogenes the Cynic
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| "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." | |
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Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
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| "Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you
are." | |
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Jose Ortega y Gasset
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| "Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you
are." | |
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Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve
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| "The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in
everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of
law." | |
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General Dwight David Eisenhower
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| "The law is not a light for you or any man to see by; the law is not
an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he
keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely." | |
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Robert Bolt
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| "The law is reason free from passion." | |
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Aristotle
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| "The law is the expression of the will of the strongest for the time
being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to
generation." | |
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Brooks Adams
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| "The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human
experience for the benefit of the public." | |
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Samuel Johnson
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| "The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the
law free." | |
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Henry David Thoreau
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| "The law: It has honored us; may we honor it." | |
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Daniel Webster
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| "The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural
laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they
have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever,
divine or human, collective or individual." | |
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Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
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| "The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceedingly
small." | |
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Friedrich von Logau
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| "The more laws, the less justice." | |
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Marcus Tullius Cicero
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| "The problem with any unwritten law is that you don"t know where to
go to erase it." | |
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Unknown
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| "The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly
enforced." | |
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Francis Vincent "Frank" Zappa, Jr.
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| "There never has been devised, and there never will be devised, any
law which will enable a man to succeed save by the exercise of those
qualities which have always been the prerequisites of success ? the
qualities of hard work, of keen intelligence, of unflinching will." | |
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Theodore Roosevelt
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| "This is what has to be remembered about the law: Beneath that cold,
harsh, impersonal exterior there beats a cold, harsh, impersonal
heart." | |
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David Frost
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| "Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and
be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within
them." | |
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Hermann Hesse
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| "Useless laws weaken the necessary laws." | |
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Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
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| "We ought to be persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can
never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order
and right which heaven itself has ordained." | |
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George Washington
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| "When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even
get anarchy. You get the small laws." | |
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Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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| "When you go to court you are putting your fate into the hands of
twelve people who weren?t smart enough to get out of jury duty." | |
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Norm Crosby
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| "Where law ends tyranny begins." | |
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William Pitt, "the Elder Pitt"
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| "Where law ends, there tyranny begins." | |
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William Pitt
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| "Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins." | |
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John Locke
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| "You can?t legislate intelligence and common sense into
people." | |
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Will Rogers
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