1960s, Memorial Day speech (1963)
Context: The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed — and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves. If the white over-estimates what he has done for the Negro without the law, the Negro may under-estimate what he is doing and can do for himself with the law.
“Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.”
L 44
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137
German scientist, satirist 1742–1799Related quotes
Gottfried Leibniz (May, 1686) as quoted in George R. Montgomery, Tr., "Correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld," Leibniz: Discourse on metaphysics; correspondence with Arnauld, and Monadology https://books.google.com/books?id=5-IeAQAAMAAJ (1916) VIII, p. 108
No. 12, l. 1-4.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)
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
The Caesars (c. 361)
Context: Know all ye mortals who have entered this contest,
that according to our laws and decrees the victor is
allowed to exult but the vanquished must not complain.
Depart then wherever you please, and in future live
every one of you under the guidance of the gods.
Let every man choose his own guardian and guide.
“The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 2, Of Natural Right