“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law.”

— Calvin Coolidge

Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate http://friesian.com/ross/ca40/2002.htm#war (7 January 1914). <br class="br">1910s, Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate (1914)

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Calvin Coolidge412

American politician, 30th president of the United States (i… 1872–1933

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“Duty is collective as well as personal. Law must rest on the eternal foundations of righteousness. Industry, thrift, character, cannot be conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak — whoever objects — do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand patter, but don't be a stand patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people, a faith that men desire to do right, that the government is founded upon a righteousness which will endure.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

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“What Jesus reveals is not that laws disappear but that they must be kept through righteousness of a new kind, … which is more complete because it supplements the deficiency in the laws. … This expanded content we may call an inclination so to act as the laws may command, i. e., a unification of inclination with the law whereby the latter loses its form as law. This correspondence with inclination is the πληρωμα [fulfillment] of the law.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)

“"Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty," in matters spiritual and temporal, is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the law of nations and all well-grounded municipal laws, which must have their foundation in the former.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

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“We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Quoted in [Richard C. Reuben, Man in the Middle, California Lawyer, October 1992, 35]

“The United States of America has a government of laws and not of men. The Constitution and federal law set the boundaries of what is acceptable conduct, and for this reason... when there is a dispute between the Legislature and the Executive branch over what the law requires about the circumstances under which government officials must act, the Judiciary has the authority, and the responsibility, to decide the issue.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson (1970) United States District Judge

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“As long as we have to administer the law we must do so according to the law as it is. We are not here to make the law.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

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“Since we are a Christian country, God above all. This history of a secular state doesn't exist, no. The state is Christian and the minority that is against it can leave. Let's make a country for majority! The minority must bow to the majority. Law must exist to defend the majority! The minority suits itself [to the law] or just disappears.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

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“The three laws of behavioral genetics may be the most important discoveries in the history of psychology. Yet most psychologists have not come to grips with them, and most intellectuals do not understand them …. Here are the three laws:”

Steven Pinker book The Blank Slate

The First Law. All human behavioral traits are heritable.
The Second Law. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes.
The Third Law. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.
Kindle locations 8005, 8010.
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“Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me that I must be justified by it.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2

“The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law.”

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