“The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.”

— W. H. Auden , book The Dyer's Hand

"The Prince's Dog", p. 201
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

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W. H. Auden 122

Anglo-American poet 1907–1973

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

“The only thing that can set aside a law as wrong is a better law, or an idea of a better law. And the only thing that an give a law the quality of better or worse is the concrete result which it promotes or fails to promote.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 35, p. 76.

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“But it is not possible ever to insure prosperity merely by law. Something for good can be done by law, and a bad law can do an infinity of mischief; but, after all, the best law can only prevent wrong and injustice, and give to the thrifty, the farseeing, and the hard-working a chance to exercise to best advantage their special and peculiar abilities.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

“Man has only the rights he can defend. Our most basic right is life. It's enshrined not only in our Constitution, but in the charter of the United Nations. The prohibition against taking a life is found in our most ancient texts and in the statutes of every nation. Every murder, whether in Brooklyn, Santiago, Rwanda or Kosovo, demands punishment by whatever legal means possible. Otherwise, the right to life is just an empty promise. The law against murder applies to all. No matter the perpetrator, the victim, or the country where the murder is committed. It is the one moral law that recognizes no national, racial or religious boundaries. It can tolerate no exception. There is one law. One law. And when that law is broken it is the duty of every officer of any court to rise in defense of that law, and bring their full power and diligence to bear against the law breaker. Because Man has only those rights he can defend. Only those rights.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Spoken by Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy in the Law & Order episode Vaya Con Dios.
Law & Order

“I was wrong. God's law is only Love.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

“Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Attributed to Bentham in The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations‎ (1949) by Evan Esar, p. 29; no earlier sources for this have been located.
Disputed

“Forgiveness to the injured does belong;
But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.”

John Dryden The Conquest of Granada

Part 2, Act I, scene ii.
The Conquest of Granada (1669-1670)

“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience… The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. book The Common Law

The Common Law (1881), p. 1.
1880s

“The concept of law can be defined only as the reality tending toward the idea of law.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

Rechtsphilosophie (1932)

“The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.”

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