“The limits set to arbitrary behavior are none other than those defined by law, so everyone will know his own rights and will not go beyond them. It follows that in a country where there is no law, or the law is not observed, the people will not be free and will not enjoy security … Therefore, the first thing … which I would suggest to you is to note that a free people is one whose affairs are based in law, so that whoever ignores or violates the law is an enemy of freedom …”

—  Mohammad Ali Foroughi

Radio broadcast (October 1941)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The limits set to arbitrary behavior are none other than those defined by law, so everyone will know his own rights and…" by Mohammad Ali Foroughi?
Mohammad Ali Foroughi photo
Mohammad Ali Foroughi3
Iranian politician 1877–1942

Related quotes

“Where laws rule, people are free. Conversely, where not laws, but individuals, rule, people are unfree. Law is the indispensable tool for securing personal freedom, because only under the rule of law are individuals able to plan their lives according to known expectations about the social order.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Stephen A. Douglas photo

“If there is any one principle dearer and more sacred than all others in free governments, it is that which asserts the exclusive right of a free people to form and adopt their own fundamental law, and to manage and regulate their own internal affairs and domestic institutions.”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

Speech in Chicago, Illinois http://www.bartleby.com/251/1002.html (9 July 1858) <br class="br">1850s

William Penn photo

“Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Frame of Government (1682)
Context: I know what is said by the several admirers of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, which are the rule of one, a few, and many, and are the three common ideas of government, when men discourse on the subject. But I chuse to solve the controversy with this small distinction, and it belongs to all three: Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“You can violate the law. The banks may violate the law and be sustained in doing so. But the President of the United States cannot violate the law.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Reply to brokers who urged him to lend $44 million from the U.S. Treasury reserve to banks. Harper's Weekly (11 October 1873).
1870s

“Government creates the market and law. Law is not the negation of liberty; it is its fulfillment. Right law is not a restriction on people’s liberty; it makes their freedom possible. Right law is liberty; liberty is right law.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Margaret Thatcher photo

“The freedom of peoples depends fundamentally on the rule of law, a fair legal system. The place to have trials or accusations is a court of law, the Common Law that has come right up from Magna Carta, which has come right up through the British courts – a court of law is the place where you deal with these matters. If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Criticising the Thames Television programme &quot;Death on the Rock&quot;, in an interview with Hatsuhisa Takashima of NHK Japanese television (29 April 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107058 <br class="br">Third term as Prime Minister

George Orwell photo

“The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Freedom of the Park", Tribune (7 December 1945)

Philo photo

“One may well wonder at the short-sightedness of those who ignore the characteristics which so clearly distinguish different things and declare that the laws of Solon and Lycurgus are all-sufficient to secure the greatest of republics, Athens and Sparta, because their sovereign authority is loyally accepted by those who enjoy that citizenship, yet deny that right reason, which is the fountain head of all other law, can impart freedom to the wise, who obey all that it prescribes or forbids.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

47.
Every Good Man is Free

Robert Sheckley photo

“The law,” he said, “is above the criminal and the judge, and rules them both. The law is inescapable, for an action is either lawful or unlawful. The law, indeed, may be said to have a life of its own, an existence quite apart from the finite lives of the beings who administer it. The law governs every aspect of human behavior; therefore, to the same extent that humans are lawful beings, the law is human. And being human, the law has its idiosyncrasies, just as a man has his. For a citizen who abides by the law, the law is distant and difficult to find. For those who reject and violate it, the law emerges from its musty sepulchers and goes in search of the transgressor.”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 15 (p. 65)

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“That moral order, we know, encompasses, beside the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, many other rights, as for example the right to the free exercise of religion, to freedom of speech and of the press, and to freedom of association. These are rights antecedent to the political process-rights that do not depend upon majority will-rights that majorities may not violate. They are all features of the moral "laws of nature and of nature's God." Clearly, the implications of the President's endorsement of the idea of a moral order, antecedent to all positive law, including the law of the Constitution, go far beyond the debate over abortion.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

Related topics