“The privileges of a few do not make common law.”
Exposition on Jona
Commentaries, Old Testament
Original
Privilegia paucorum non faciunt legem.
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Jerome 52
Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church 345–420Related quotes
“That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter; and common sense often makes good law.”
Writing for the court, Peak v. United States, 353 U.S. 43 (1957)
Judicial opinions
Source: Star Bridge (1955), “The History,” prelude to Chapter 3, “The Narrow Bridge” (p. 37)
“The history of the world is the history of a privileged few.”
Sunday after the war (1944), pub. New Directions.
“The experience of space is not a privilege of the gifted few, but a biological function.”
Moholy-Nagy by László Moholy-Nagy (1970) p. 238.
“Communism was the regime for the privileged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man.”
The Path To Power (1995)
“It is the principle of the common law, that an officer ought not to take money for doing his duty.”
Stotesbury v. Smith (1759), 2 Burr. Part IV. 928.
Source: Up From Slavery: An Autobiography
“Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.”
"Our Ancestors' Short Lives"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.