“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)

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 "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 …" by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg?

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg137

German scientist, satirist 1742–1799

Related quotes

“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.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

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.

“As regards the objection that possibles are independent of the decrees of God I grant it of actual decrees (although the Cartesians do not at all agree to this), but I maintain that the possible individual concepts involve certain possible free decrees; for example, if this world was only possible, the individual concept of a particular body in this world would involve certain movements as possible, it would also involve the laws of motion, which are the free decrees of God; but these, also, only as possibilities. Because, as there are an infinity of possible worlds, there are also an infinity of laws, certain ones appropriate to one; others, to another, and each possible individual of any world involves in its concept the laws of its world.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

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

“The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Now I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 12, l. 1-4. <br class="br"> Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“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

“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.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

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.