"The Problems of the Colored Race in the South," lecture, Hamilton Club, Chicago (10 December 1895) http://web.archive.org/20071031084051/www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.4/html/93.html
Context: Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.
Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.
“Writers on international law... cannot make the law … it must have received the assent of the nations who are to be bound by it. This assent may be express … or may be implied from established usage.”
The Queen v. Keyn; "The Franconia" (1876), 2 L. R. Ex. D. 202.
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Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet 13
Lord Chief Justice 1802–1880Related quotes
“We are bound by the law, so that we may be free.”
"On Freedom" (1940), p. 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false
1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950)
Context: This freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge, a consideration of much practical import. In the first instance it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population. Such an ideal of external liberty can never be fully attained but must be sought unremittingly if scientific thought, and philosophical and creative thinking in general, are to be advanced as far as possible.
Address at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa (15 October 1962) https://news.cornellcollege.edu/dr-martin-luther-kings-visit-to-cornell-college/; also quoted in Wall Street Journal (13 November 1962), Notable & Quotable , p. 18
Variant:
It is true that behavior cannot be legislated, and legislation cannot make you love me, but legislation can restrain you from lynching me, and I think that is kind of important.
Address at Finney Chapel, Oberlin College (22 October 1964), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise, The Chronicle-Telegram (21 January 2008)
1960s
“The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.”
Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 7, Usage, p. 45.
Part 2, Book 11, ch. 5, sect. 3, art. 10.
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840)
Quoted in Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations, 1982, Jonathon Green.
Attributed
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture