quotations about law
If nature does not ratify law, then all the virtues may lose their sway.
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
The Laws
Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
JEAN ANOUILH
Antigone
When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this.
HOWARD ZINN
Voices of a People's History of the United States
Law intends indeed to do service to human life, but it is not able when men do not choose to accept her services; for it is only in those who are obedient to her that she displays her special virtue.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons, namely, by those who make them, by those who execute them, and by those who suffer if they break them.
GEORGE SAVILE
"Of Laws", A Character of King Charles the Second: and Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
I reverence the law, but not where it is a pretext for wrong, which it should be the very object of law to hinder.... I hold it blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.
CHARLES MACKLIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
No man ever feels the restraint of law so long as he remains within the sphere of his liberty -- a sphere, by the way, always large enough for the full exercise of his powers and the supply of all his legitimate wants.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Gold-Foil
The rule of law is a jewel of great value. It is the means by which we do public and private justice.
BRIAN DIJKEMA
"Rule of law is a cornerstone of our society", Troy Media, April 5, 2016
It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Well thought out law is elegant, economical, easy to learn.
PETER BIRKS
The Roman Law of Obligations
Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this one you have the law.
WILLIAM GADDIS
A Frolic of His Own
The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land; unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour.... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Jane Eyre
The law is reason unaffected by desire.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Address at the Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul, Sep. 2, 1901
The doctrine of the law then is this: that precedents and rules must be followed, unless flatly absurd or unjust: for though their reason be not obvious at first view, yet we owe such a deference to former times as not to suppose they acted wholly without consideration.
WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
Commentaries on the Laws of England
But the law is good to edify, if a man use it lawfully: for that the end of it is charity, out of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions