
32 Dionysius
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders
Jennings v. Rundall (1799), 8 T.R. 337.
32 Dionysius
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders
As quoted in "Vonnegut's Blues For America" Sunday Herald (7 January 2006)
Various interviews
Mayor, &c. of Colchester v. Seaber (1765), 3 Burr. Part IV. 1871.
“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”
"The Tosh Horse," The New Statesman (1925); later included in Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews (1928), ch. 11
“God forbid that we should have any desire to return to that living hell!”
Individualism and Socialism (1933)
Context: Even if the days of 1928 and early 1929 could be brought back again, the economic situation would be utterly indefensible on moral grounds. The greedy scramble for private gain and special privilege, the gambling spirit and the ruthless determination to gain wealth by means fair and foul, the callous indifference to how the other half lived or at most the throwing of a few crumbs of philanthropy, the bitter exploitation of the weak and the brutal suppression of the workers as they attempted to organize in defense of their minimum rights, the cruel assumption that there must always be a wide gulf between the rich and the poor, the willingness to send unnumbered victims to their doom on the battlefield in defense of vested interests—all these and countless other evils are inherent in the economic order which held sway in 1929. God forbid that we should have any desire to return to that living hell!
“God forbid that Judges upon their oath should make resolutions to enlarge jurisdiction.”
Reeves v. Buttler (1715), Gilbert, Eq. Ca. 196; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 137.
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994)
Context: If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don't believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God?
I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.
“So long as Courts of justice remain Courts of justice there must be decency maintained.”
1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 382.
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)