“Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law”

— Michael Foot

interview, 1980
1980s

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

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Michael Foot54

British politician 1913–2010

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

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

“Rich people didn’t get in that kind of mess. They never had. Only the poor got trapped: by ignorance, by religion, by self-righteous laws passed by people who broke them with impunity.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 32)

“The Judge is intrusted with the liberties of the people, and his saying is the Law.”

Sir Thomas Twisden, 1st Baronet (1602–1683) English politician

King v. Wagstaffe (1665), Sir Thomas Ray. Rep. 138.

“Here lies the peerless paper lord, Lord Peter,
Who broke the laws of God and man, and metre.”

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) Scottish writer and editor

Epitaph on Patrick ("Peter"), Lord Robertson (1845); cited from Mary Gordon "Christopher North": A Memoir of John Wilson (New York: W. J. Widdleton, 1863) p. 286.

“Liberty in the most literal sense is the negation of law for law is restraint, and the absence of restraint is anarchy. On the other hand, anarchy by destroying restraint would leave liberty the exclusive possession of the strong or the unscrupulous.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

p, 125
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)

“Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

Source: The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

“Building a new world is the most perilous form of pioneering, and the most glorious victories of religion have ever been won in hours of fiercest danger. And so it will be in our day.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Individualism and Socialism (1933)
Context: Pacific revolution in America will not be wrought by men who are afraid of losing influence, position, and income. Building a new world is the most perilous form of pioneering, and the most glorious victories of religion have ever been won in hours of fiercest danger. And so it will be in our day.

“A perverted people, should it attaint its liberty, is bound to lose this very soon, because it would be useless to try to impress upon such people that happiness lies in the practice of righteousness; that the reign of law is more powerful than the reign of tyrants, who are more inflexible, and all ought to submit to the wholesome severity of the law; that good morals, and not force, are the pillars of the law and that the exercise of justice is the exercise of liberty.”

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador

As quoted in The World’s Great Speeches, Lewis Copeland and Lawrence Lamm, edit., Dover Publications Inc. (1958) p. 388
The Angostura Address (1819)

“It is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court's claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) ; decided June 26, 2015.
2010s

“The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play.”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

The Lottery (1948)

“Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law”

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