“If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man”
1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)
Context: If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict, not as a good one, who finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or outside of it, in the vaguer sanctions of conscience.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 107
United States Supreme Court justice 1841–1935Related quotes
“You will be what you must be, or else you will be nothing.”
Serás lo que debas ser o si no no serás nada.
Quoted in La vida blanca (1960) by Eduardo Mallea, p. 154
Variant translation: You will be what you should be or else will not be.
“If you got everything you wanted there would be nothing left for anyone else.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)
“First law of gossip—there’s no point knowing something if somebody else doesn’t know you know it.”
Source: Moon Over Soho (2011), Chapter 11, “Those Foolish Things” (p. 239)
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
“If you want to be successful you must look successful. ”
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth