Quotes about laws (6497 quotes, page 30)

“Mr. Grey was much obliged to his hon. friend for submitting the motion to the House. The length of time during which the nation had groaned under such vexatious and tyrannical institutions, was with him a reason why they should exist no longer, and he wished Mr. Curwen to move for a committee to inquire into the state of the game laws.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Remarks in the House of Commons on the debate on Mr. Curwen's Motion to Repeal the Game Laws (4 March 1796), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXI (London: 1818), p. 845.
1790s

Game , Time , Housing

“Something must be done, and that speedily, to bridge the widening chasm between the Executive and the Congress. Our experience with President Wilson has demonstrated this. As a self-centered autocrat, confident of himself and suspicious of others, hostile to advice or discussion, he became the absolute master of the Congress while his party was in the majority. The Congress, instead of being a co-ordinate branch, was really in session only to accept, adopt and put into laws the imperious will of the president. When, however, the majority changed, there being no confidence between the executive and the legislative branch of the government, the necessary procedure was almost paralyzed. The president was unyielding and the Congress insisted upon the recognition of its constitutional rights. Even if the president is, as McKinley was, in close and frequent touch with the Senate and the House of Representatives, the relation is temporary and unequal, and not what it out to be, automatic. Happily we have started a budget system; but the Cabinet should have seats on the floor of the Houses, and authority to answer questions and participate in debates.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

My Memories of Eighty Years (1922), p. 189

Hostility , Confidence , Question , Change

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law [this quote is referring to English Common Law].”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764) Broken link http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf. Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, p. 459
1760s

Quotes , Parting

“They tell us of the fixed laws of nature! but who dares maintain that He who fixed these laws cannot use them for the purpose of answering His people's prayers?”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 473.

People , Nature

“I have been in the Place of the Gods and seen it! Now slay me, if it is the law — but still I know they were men.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

Men , God

“I agree that is the law, though I think it is a hard law; but we have nothing to do with the question of hardship.”

William Brett, 1st Viscount Esher (1815–1899) British lawyer, judge and politician

In re Perkins (1890), L. R. 24 Q. B. D. 618.

Question , Thinking

“We women have before us the noblest end to which a finite creature may attain; and our duty is nothing else than the fulfilment of the whole moral law, the attainment of every human virtue.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Lecture I, p. 23
The Duties of Women (1881)

Women

“To make a law final, so as not to be reached by Congress, is, by mere legislation, to fasten a new provision on the Constitution. Nay, more; it gives to the law a character which the very Constitution docs not possess. The wise fathers did not treat the country as a Chinese foot, never to grow after infancy; but, anticipating Progress, they declared expressly that their great Act is not final. According to the Constitution itself, there is not one of its existing provisions — not even that with regard to fugitives from labor — which may not at all times be reached by amendment, and thus be drawn into debate. This is rational and just. Sir, nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final. Truth alone is final.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," speech in the Senate (July 27, 1852)

Truth , Time , Country

“For more than six hundred years—that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge, what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

An Essay on the Trial by Jury, Boston, MA: John P. Jewett and Company, Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (1852) p. 5

Justice , Personality

“To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter V, p. 584.

Justice , Exercises , Idea , Time

“To be independent to my mind does not mean to be isolated, to be the priest or the Levite, but rather to be the good Samaritan. There is no real independence save only as we secure it through the law of service.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

“Law steps in where nature fails: virtually everywhere. Laws create nature - a male nature and a female nature and natural intercourse - by telling errant, unnatural human beings what to do and what not to do to protect and express their real nature - the real man, the real female, the real hierarchy thta natture or God created putting man on top.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 8

God , Nature

“And Lincoln said that by your own argument, if the local regulations are not forthcoming, you must support the federal enforcement; if you don’t, you’re taking the same position as the abolitionists, who denied any obligation to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Support

“Muhammad Kasim fixed a tax upon all the subjects, according to the laws of the Prophet. Those who embraced the Muhammadan faith were exempted from slavery, the tribute, and the poll-tax, and from those who did not change their creed a tax was exacted according to three grades. The first grade was of great men, and each of these was to pay silver, equal to forty-eight dirams in weight, the second grade twenty-four dirams, and the lowest grade twelve dirams. It was ordered that all who should become Musulmans at once should be exempted from the payment, but those who were desirous of their old persuasion must pay the tribute and poll-tax. Some showed an inclination to abide by their creed, and some having resolved upon paying tribute, held by the faith of their forefathers, but their lands and property were not taken from them…”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

The Chach Nama, in: Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume I, p. 176-182.
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Men , Faith , Change

“As a matter of fact, others are ready to help. There is for instance the Weather; and there is the Law of Gravity; and last but not least, Time. These are tough fellows. Night and day, always at it. And at it still. No one is a match for them.</b”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Time , Help , Weather , Night

“I wasn't built to look the other way because the law demanded it. The law might be wrong.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Source: 2000s, Promises to Keep (2008), Page 42

Way

“The reason Smolin's idea is interesting is that it may answer the challenge, "The universe is too good to be true. It looks like a put-up job." But, note that the Smolin hypothesis cannot be used to account in particular for the BIOLOGICAL part of that "too good to be true". Smolinian selection may account for the fact that our universe has the necessary constants, dimensionality and laws to last for last for a long time (not fizzle out or crunch immediately its initiating bang), long enough to spawn daughter universes (and INCIDENTALLY long enough to breed life). But Smolinian selection cannot account for the fact that our universe is specifically congenial to life, or to intelligent life, or to us. My negative conclusion would break down only if life itself is in the habit of engineering the spawning of daughter universes. As far as I am aware, this hasn't been suggested, but it is, I suppose, a theoretical possibility that daughter universes are generated as a consequence of the fooling around of highly evolved physicists.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins, "Science Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder" https://www.edge.org/conversation/science-delusion-and-the-appetite-for-wonder, John Brockman, Edge.org, 1.2.97.

Life , Fools , Intelligence , Idea

“It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as that useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions.”

Charles Dickens book The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 35

“A second conspicuous landmark… is the enunciation of the fundamental law of radioactive disintegration by Rutherford and Soddy in 1903. This law was in no sense a consequence or development of Planck's theories; indeed fourteen years were to elapse before any connection was noticed between the two. The new law asserted that the atoms of radioactive substances broke up spontaneously, and not because of any particular conditions or special happenings. This seemed to involve an even more startling break with classical theory than the new laws of Planck; radioactive break-up appeared to be an effect without a cause, and suggested that the ultimate laws of nature were not even causal.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Nature , Sense , Appearance

“Here is the basis of the modern critical biblical science, which treats the documents of Christianity and Judaism according to the same principles of historical investigation which are valid in all other historical domains, particularly in that of the history of the ethnic religions.
The attempt has been crowned with brilliant success. Everywhere, where formerly miracles and oracles, the activity of supernatural persons, and the appearance on the scene of supernatural beings were thought to be discerned, there shows itself now a constant succession of events that are natural, i. e. in accord with the universal laws of human experience. The prophets appear no longer as media of supernatural oracles, but as men whose works and words are perfectly explicable from the character regarded in connection with the conditions of their age and environment. They stand, indeed, in a certain respect above their contemporaries, so far as they contest the modes of thought and action of the latter, and hold before them higher ideals of purer piety and morality; yet these ideals were not communicated to them from without by supernatural revelation, but sprang from their own spirit as products of an especially powerful and happy religious-moral nature, which, under the influence of historical relations, had been so developed that they saw clearly what was perverted in the mode of thought of others, and gave to the better a potent expression.”

Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908) German Protestant theologian

Source: Evolution and Theology (1900), pp. 10-11.

Men , Age , Religion , History

“I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.”

Jonathan Swift book A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding

World , Suffering , Evil

“It is the old, old worry: will the British people perceive in time what is happening to them and where they are being taken? If they do, I am not afraid for the outcome. But will they? … referendum day is certainly not the last chance, because I am sure that, if the result is interpreted as sanctioning Stay In, the events of the following months will open many eyes that are closed at present. Perhaps, however, I might express it this way: if referendum day is not September, 1939, at any rate it is September, 1938. The nation is being invited to confirm the surrender, and the permanent surrender, of its most precious possession: its political independence and parliamentary self-government, and the right to live under laws and to pay taxes authorized only by Parliament and to be governed by policies for which the executive is fully accountable through Parliament to the electorate. Above and beyond all the arguments about butter mountains and Brussels bureaucrats there lies that stark fact, undenied and undeniable.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'The one stark fact', The Times (4 June 1975), p. 14
1970s

People , Way , Mountain , Chance

“For us humanity was a distant goal toward which all men were moving, whose image no one knew, whose laws were nowhere written down.”

David Zindell book Neverness

Emil Sinclair
Neverness (1988)

Men , Distant

“When finally our Constitution was adopted, it contained specific provision that the President and members of the Congress and of state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officials, should be qualified for the discharge of their office by oath or affirmation. By the statute law of the United States, and I doubt not by all States, such oaths are administered by a solemn appeal to God for help in the keeping of their covenants. I scarcely need to refer to the fact that the houses of the Congress, and so far as I know the state legislatures, open their daily sessions with prayer. The foundation of our independence and our Government rests upon our basic religious convictions. Back of the authority of our laws is the authority of the Supreme Judge of the World, to whom we still appeal for their final justification.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

God , World , Help , Housing

“Mass psychology is not simply a summation of individual psychologies; that is a prime theorem of social psychodynamics—not just my opinion; no exception has ever been found to this theorem. It is the social mass-action rule, the mob-hysteria law, known and used by military, political, and religious leaders, by advertising men and prophets and propagandists, by rabble rousers and actors and gang leaders, for generations before it was formulated in mathematical symbols. It works.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Methuselah’s Children (p. 535)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Men , Mathematics

“The moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but, rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says: "The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, Nor yet doth linger."”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (29 October 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 275.
1850s

Men , Penalty

“We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: The Dissident, 2011

People , Game , Change

“Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation and the end of our democratically elected Parliament as the supreme law making body in the United Kingdom.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Letter to Bristol constituents (29 December 1974), reprinted in Tony Benn, 'The Common Market: Loss of Self-Government', in M. Holmes (ed.), The Eurosceptical Reader (Springer, 2016), p. 38
1970s

Communication

“Possession is eleven points in the law.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

Woman's Wit, Act I (1697).

“It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein's Law and yell, ‘Stop.’ You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2013, Detroit Ran Into The Inviolable Rule Of Economics (2013)

Time

“I was born in the Realms of Etiquette;
In early years, unprotected and poor.
Alone, I learnt to distinguish between Evil and Good;
Untutored, I toiled at bitter tasks.
The World's Law honours Learning and Fame;
Scholars prize marriages and Caps.
With these fetters I gyved my own hands;
Truly I became a much-deceived man.
At ten years old I learnt to read books;
At fifteen, I knew how to write prose.
At twenty I was made a Bachelor of Arts;
At thirty I became a Censor at the Court.
Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents;
Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child.
The support of my family, the service of my country—
For these tasks my nature is not apt.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Chu Ch'ēn Village" (A.D. 811)
Arthur Waley's translations

Marriage , Books , World , Family

“I'll tell you what harms the vast majority of Muslims that love freedom and hate terror: Muslim theocracy does. Muslim intolerance does. Wahabism does. Salafism does. Islamism does. Jihadism does. Sharia law does. The mere conservatism of traditional Islam does. We're not talking about only jihadists hating homosexuals and thinking they should die, we're talking about conservative Muslims. The percentage of British Muslims polled who said that homosexuality was morally acceptable was zero. Do you realize what it takes to say something so controversial in a poll that not even 1% of those polled would agree with it? There's almost no question that extreme that you will ever see in a poll that gets a zero, but ask British Muslims whether homosexuality is morally acceptable, and that's what you get. And the result is more or less the same in dozens of other countries. It's zero in Cameroon, zero in Ethiopia. 1% in Nigeria, 1% in Tanzania, 1% in Mali, 2% in Kenya, 2% in Chad. 1% in Lebanon, 1% in Egypt, 1% in the Palestinian territories, 1% in Iraq, 2% in Jordan, 2% in Tunisia, 1% in Pakistan. But 10% in Bangladesh. Bangladesh: that bright spot in the Muslim world where they are regularly hunting down and butchering secular writers with machetes. The people who suffer under this belief system are Muslims themselves. The next generation of human beings born into a Muslim community who could otherwise have been liberal, tolerant, well-educated, cosmopolitan productive people are to one or another degree being taught to aspire to live in the Middle Ages, or to ruin this world on route to some fictional paradise after death. That's the thing we have to get our heads around. And yes, some of what I just said applies with varying modifications to other religions and other cults. But there is nothing like Islam at this moment for generating this kind of intolerance and chaos. And if only a right wing demagogue will speak honestly about it, then we will elect right wing demagogues in the West more and more in response to it. And that will be the price of political correctness: that's when this check will finally get cashed. That will be the consequence of this persistent failure we see among liberals to speak and think and act with real moral clarity and courage on this issue. The root of this problem is that liberals consistently fail to defend liberal values as universal human values. Their political correctness, their multiculturalism, their moral relativism has led them to rush to the defense of theocrats and to abandon the victims of theocracy and to vilify anyone who calls out this hypocrisy for what it is as a bigot. And to be clear, and this is what liberals can't seem to get, is that speaking honestly about the ideas that inspire Islamism and jihadism, beliefs about martyrdom, and apostasy and blasphemy and paradise and honour and women, is not an expression of hatred for Muslims. It is in fact the only way to support the embattled people in the Muslim community: The reformers and the liberals and the seculars and the free thinkers and the gays and the Shiia in Sunni-majority context and Sufis and Ahmadiyyas, and as Maajid Nawaz said, the minorities within the minority, who are living under the shadow, and sword rather often, under theocracy. […] If you think that speaking honestly about the need for reform within Islam will alienate your allies in the Muslim community, then you don't know who your allies are.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Waking Up with Sam Harris Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2" (15 June 2016) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2
2010s

Love , Death , Women , Hate

“Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes … No law that we now have on the books …can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

Women , Men , Books , Country

“The copious literature on the work of artist Robert Smithson has made very little of the many parallels between the inventor of earthworks and the nineteenthcentury author of pataphysics, despite the established fact that the artist read and made notes from Alfred Jarry’s Dr. Faustroll (1898) while working on the Spiral Jetty in 1970, which undoubtedly influenced the subsequent Broken Circle &/ Spiral Hill (1971, Emmen). Given the insightful literature reassessing Jarry’s influence on twentieth-century artists including Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Rodney Graham, a consideration of Smithson’s spiral earthworks in connection with Jarry is long overdue. In contrast to prevailing art research practices today, Smithson’s work is much more aligned with the pataphysical pursuit of ‘imaginary solutions’ that examine ‘the laws governing exceptions’ and describe ‘a universe which can be – and perhaps should be – envisaged in place of the traditional one’.”

Edward A. Shanken (1964) American art historian

Edward A. Shanken (2013). " Broken Circle &/ Spiral Hill: Smithson’s Spirals, Pataphysics, Syzygy, and Survival http://artexetra.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/shanken-smithson-2013.pdf."

Art , Literature , Universe , Reading

“Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back;
And is a swelling, and the last affection
A high mind can put off; being both a rebel
Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth
All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion,
and offereth violence to nature's self.”

Ben Jonson Catiline His Conspiracy

Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act III, scene ii

Religion , Soul , Nature

“In a class system, the social hierarchy is based primarily upon differences in monetary wealth and income. Social classes are not sharply marked off from each other, nor are they demarcated by tangible boundaries. Unlike estates, they have no legal standing, individuals of all classes being in principle equal before the law. Consequently, there are no legal restraints on the movement of individuals and families from one class to another… Unlike caste, social classes are not organized, closed groups. Rather, they are aggregates of persons with similar amounts of wealth and property, and similar sources of income.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Class and society (1959), p. 15; as cited in: Ronald J. Samuda (1998) Psychological Testing of American Minorities: Issues and Consequences. p. 47.

Family , Personality , Wealth

“A superpower is a cold war term. When people today say that Russia aspires to have this status, I interpret it in the following way: they want to undermine trust in Russia, to portray Russia as frightening, and create some kind of image of an enemy. … Russia is in favor of a multipolar world, a democratic world order, strengthening the system of international law, and for developing a legal system in which any small country, even a very small country, can feel itself secure, as if behind a stone wall. … Russia is ready to become part of this multipolar world and guarantee that the international community observes these rules. And not as a superpower with special rights, but rather as an equal among equals.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

http://kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/01/18/0726_type82914type82916_117126.shtml
2006- 2010

War , People , World , Way

“The basic principal of this government is the will of the people. A system was devised by its founders which seemed to insure the means of ascertaining that will and of enacting it into legislation and supporting it through the administration of the law. This was to be accomplished by electing men to make, and men to execute the laws, who, would represent in the laws so made and executed the will of the people. This was the establishment of a representative government, where every man had equal voice, equal rights, and equal responsibilities. Have we such a government today? Or is this country fast coming to be dominated by forces that threaten the true principle of representative government?”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

“The Danger Threatening Representative Government” Speech (1897) http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/pdfs/lessons/EDU-SpeechTranscript-SpeechesLaFollette-DangerThreatening.pdf

Men , People , Support , Country

“My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don't know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

Wick
Allison
Sharron Angle Decries Muslim Law in Bent Tree
2010-10-08
Frontburner
D Magazine
http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2010/10/08/sharron-angle-decries-muslim-law-in-frankford-texas/
2010-10-20
Christina
Silva
Angle: Muslim Law Taking Hold in Parts of US
Associated Press
2010-10-07
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=11826443
The city of Frankford, Texas no longer exists. It was annexed by Dallas in 1975.

“[T]he United States is history’s exception, not its rule. America is a great, evolving experiment of a constitutional republic in which peoples of all different races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds are equal under the law and see themselves as Americans first and members of tribes second — appearance and religion being incidental rather than essential to the American body politic.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, America: One Nation, Indivisible (2015)

People , Religion , History , Appearance

“It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Il est à peu près impossible de constituer systématiquement une morale naturelle. La nature n'a pas de principes. Elle ne nous fournit aucune raison de croire que la vie humaine est respectable. La nature, indifférente, ne fait nulle distinction du bien et du mal.
La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels] (1914), ch. XXVII

Life , Nature , Evil , Indifference

“The Good Economist Hayek is the thinker who has mind-blowing insights into just why the competitive market system is such a marvelous societal device for coordinating our by now 7.2 billion-wide global division of labor. Few other economists imagined that Lenin’s centrally-planned economy behind the Iron Curtain was doomed to settle at a level of productivity 1/5 that of the capitalist industrial market economies outside. Hayek did so imagine. And Hayek had dazzling insights as to why. Explaining the thought of this Hayek requires not sociology or history of thought but rather appreciation, admiration, and respect for pure genius.The Bad Economist Hayek is the thinker who was certain that Keynes had to be wrong, and that the mass unemployment of the Great Depression had to have in some mysterious way been the fault of some excessively-profligate government entity (or perhaps of those people excessively clever with money–fractional-reserve bankers, and those who claim not the natural increase of flocks but rather the interest on barren gold). Why Hayek could not see with everybody else–including Milton Friedman–that the Great Depression proved that Say’s Law was false in theory, and that aggregate demand needed to be properly and delicately managed in order to make Say’s Law true in practice is largely a mystery. Nearly everyone else did: the Lionel Robbinses and the Arthur Burnses quickly marked their beliefs to market after the Great Depression and figured out how to translate what they thought into acceptable post-World War II Keynesian language. Hayek never did.
My hypothesis is that the explanation is theology: For Hayek, the market could never fail. For Hayek, the market could only be failed. And the only way it could be failed was if its apostles were not pure enough.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek: Focus/The Honest Broker for the Week of August 9, 2014 http://equitablegrowth.org/making-sense-friedrich-von-hayek-focusthe-honest-broker-week-august-9-2014/ (2014)

Money , War , People , World

“It is a question of going beyond the description of mechanisms of interaction between locations and activities, in order to discover the structural laws of the production and functioning of the spatial forms studied… There is no specific theory of space, but quite simply a deployment and specification of the theory of social structure, in order to account for the characteristics of the particular social form, space and its articulation with other historically given, form and processes.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, 1977, p. 124 as quoted in: Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin (2010) Key Thinkers on Space and Place. p. 101

Question , Study

“Judiciary in India holds a place of pride in the country and outside. At present, there is a tendency in our country to defy law and authority. If this were continued, it would be a bad day for India and would cut at the very roots of our nascent democracy. The rule of law should be respected so that the basic structure of our democracy is maintained and further strengthened.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

About Democracy

Democracy , Country

“The common law of chattels, that is to say, the law ultimately adopted by the King's courts for the regulation of disputes about the ownership and possession of goods, was, to be a substantial extent, a by-product of that new procedure which had been mainly introduced to perfect the feudal scheme of land law.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter V, The Law Of Chattels, p. 55

Perfection

“Inclusive. It’s one of those ghastly, politically correct words that have survived the demise of New Labour. Schools have got to be ‘inclusive’ these days. That means wheelchair ramps, the complete works of Alice Walker in the school library (though no Mark Twain) and a Special Educational Needs Department that can cope with everything from dyslexia to Münchausen syndrome by proxy. If [then education secretary, Michael] Gove is serious about wanting to bring back O-levels, the government will have to repeal the Equalities Act because any exam that isn’t ‘accessible’ to a functionally illiterate troglodyte with a mental age of six will be judged to be ‘elitist’ and therefore forbidden by Harman’s Law.”

Toby Young (1963) British journalist

Spectator magazine (2012)

Age , Education , School

“…with Indians there is an unhealthy love of the law…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

Love

“Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2002, Letter to the American people (2002)

People

“Legislation is introduced by Parliament, but we should remember that all our advances, freedom and liberties are due to men and women who, when their conscience compelled them, have been prepared to defy the law. If legislation is introduced which erodes our basic freedom and democracy or threatens our right to combine, we should oppose it with the same vigour and determination of our forefathers. I believe it will be necessary to use all measures, including industrial action, to defy Tebbit's law and defend our movement.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

Speech in Yorkshire (15 March 1982), quoted in Paul Routledge, "Scargill urges strike against Tebbit Bill", The Times (16 March 1982), p. 2

Women , Men , Democracy , Freedom

“To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be
Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Asia, Act II, sc. iv, l. 47
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Love , Faith

“Ours, according to Leibnitz, is the best of all possible worlds, and the laws of nature can therefore be described in terms of extremal principles. Thus, arising from corresponding variational problems, the differential equations of mechanics have invariance properties relative to certain groups of coordinate transformations.”

Carl Ludwig Siegel (1896–1981) German mathematician

[Lectures on Celestial Mechanics, https://books.google.com/books?id=mZtrCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1] (p. 1)

World , Nature , Problem

“Among the names of those who have led the great advance of the industrial arts during the past thirty years, that of Frederick Winslow Taylor will hold an increasingly high place. Others have led in electrical development, in the steel industry, in industrial chemistry, in railroad equipment, in the textile arts, and in many other fields, but he has been the creator of a new science, which underlies and will benefit all of these others by greatly increasing their efficiency and augmenting their productivity. In addition, he has literally forged a new tool for the metal trades, which has doubled, or even trebled, the productive capacity of nearly all metal-cutting machines. Either achievement would entitle him to high rank among the notable men of his day; — the two combined give him an assured place among the world's leaders in the industrial arts.
Others without number have been organizers of industry and commerce, each working out, with greater or less success, the solution of his own problems, but none perceiving that many of these problems involved common factors and thus implied the opportunity and the need of an organized science. Mr. Taylor was the first to grasp this fact and to perceive that in this field, as in the physical sciences, the Baconian system could be applied, that a practical science could be created by following the three principles of that system, viz.: the correct and complete observation oi facts, the intelligent and unbiased analysis of such facts, and the formulating of laws by deduction from the results so reached. Not only did he comprehend this fundamental conception and apply it; he also grasped the significance and possibilities of the problem so fully that his codification of the fundamental principles of the system he founded is practically complete and will be a lasting monument to its founder.”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Henry R. Towne, in: Frank Barkley Copley, Frederick W. Taylor, father of scientific management https://archive.org/stream/frederickwtaylor01copl, 1923. p. xii.

Men , World , Art , Intelligence

“.. the nineteenth-century Empire undeniably pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour. It invested immense sums in developing a global network of modern communications. It spread and enforced the rule of law over vast areas. Though it fought many small wars, the Empire maintained a global peace unmatched before or since. In the twentieth century too it more than justified its own existence, for the alternatives to British rule represented by the German and Japanese empires were clearly far worse. And without its Empire, it is inconceivable that Britain could have withstood them.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)

War , Peace , Communication

“Simple-minded beyond the experience of Wall Street or State Street, he resorted, like most men of the same intellectual calibre, to commonplaces when at a loss for expression: "Let us have peace!" or, "The best way to treat a bad law is to execute it"; or a score of such reversible sentences generally to be gauged by their sententiousness.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men , Peace , Way , Gauge

“The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 38

Women , Men , War , People

“The future of great business lies in man’s comprehension of the principle of Balance in Natural Law and his determination to work WITH it instead of against it.”

Walter Russell (1871–1963) American philosopher

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe

Business , Nature , Future

“Like gun laws, spy laws, courtesy of the Surveillance State, oppress only law-abiding, harmless individuals.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"In the West, the Inmates Run the Asylym," http://praag.org/?p=21073 Praag.org, December 4, 2015.
2010s, 2015

“There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring. Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense, may be safely attributed.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", pages 403-404 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=420&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Men , Religion , Nature , Sense

“Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Unconstitutional Legislation Threatens Freedoms, May 7, 2007 freerepublic.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1830822/posts
2000s, 2006-2009

Hate

“This was Saudi Arabia, where Islam originated, governed strictly according to the scriptures and example of the Prophet Muhammad. And by law, all women in Saudi Arabia must be in the care of a man. My mother argued loudly with the Saudi immigration official, but he merely repeated in an ever louder voice that she could not leave the airport without a man in charge.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 3: Playing Tag in Allah's Palace

Women

“When you have enough money the law is a reed that will always bend your way.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

Money , Way

“In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter X-XIV, Chapter XIV.

Change

“Just you think, in a rocket a man takes the risk of bursting like a balloon, or freezing, or roasting, or sweating all his blood out in a single gush, before he can even cry out, and all that remains is bits of bone floating inside armored hulls, in accordance with the laws of Newton as corrected by Einstein, those two milestones in our progress. Down the road we go, all in good faith and see where it gets us. Think about our success Kelvin; think about our cabins, the unbreakable plates, the immortal sinks, legions of faithful wardobes devoted cupboards…”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 12: "The Dreams", p. 185 [elipsis in original]

Faith , Thinking , Success , Cry

“This is a book about a lie and the liars who told it to the American people. It is also about citizenship and the responsibility of all Americans to hold themselves to the highest standards of citizenship, including holding accountable those we elect to represent us in higher office. It is about truth, justice and the rule of law and the danger imposed on us all by those who lie, pervert justice, and absolve themselves from the rule of law.”

Scott Ritter book Frontier Justice

Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America, 2003
2003

People , Truth , Lie , Books

“Self-defense is the clearest of all laws; and for this reason - the lawyers didn't make it.”

Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) English dramatist and writer

Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“I am interested in the creativity of the criminal attitude because I recognize in it the existence of a special condition of crazy creativity. A creativity without morals fired only by the energy of freedom and the rejection of all codes and laws. For freedom rejects the dictated roles of the law and of the imposed order and for this reason is isolated.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quoted by Germano Celant, Beuys, tracce in Italia, Amelio, 1978
1970's

Freedom

“Laws creates male dominance, and maintain it, as a social environment. Male dominance is the environment we know, in which we must live. It is our air, water, earth. Laws shape our perceptions and knowledge of what male dominance is, of how it works, of what it means to us. Laws shape the experiences the experiences we have before we have them Laws significantly predetermine how we will feel, will understand, what will happen to us in life. Laws establish or humans the terms of our symbiosis with male dominance: what it takes from us to sustain itself as an overall environmental system.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter Eight

Life , Feeling , Understanding , Knowledge

“This is destined to be a very wealthy portion of the United States, and, if to this we can add the most temperate, nothing will prevent our rising, and becoming a valuable acquisition to the union. Much power now lies in your hands, and, I sincerely hope, we may commence our new career with a law in our statute books, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits in Oregon territory.”

George Abernethy (1807–1877) American merchant and politician

George Abernethy (1849) " Governor George Abernethy Legislative Message, 1849 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777825", Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State.

Books , Hope , Sincerity

“Truth', written 'in capital letters', is an orphan in this world, without power and influence… ['Reason'] cannot stand diverging opinions - it calls them 'lies'; it puts itself 'above' the real lives of human beings, demanding, in a way characteristic of all totalitarian ideologies, the right to rebuild the world from the height of 'what it should be', i. e. in accordance with its own 'invincible' precepts. It refuses to recognize the many ideas, actions, feelings, laws, institutions, racial features which separate one nation (culture, civilization) from another… The reason of ordinary people trying to create a better and safer world for themselves and their children (which is reason with a small 'r' and not Reason 'written in capital letters') has very little in common with these ignorant dreams of domination.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 102.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

Children , People , Truth , World

“In the light of fuller day,
Of purer science, holier laws.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

On the Death of a certain Journal, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Ring in the nobler modes of life / with sweeter manners, purer laws", Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam, cvi, Stanza 4.
Attributed

Light , Science

“Plenty of states, like Florida, still don't have [law guardians]. What does that tell you? Because with non-attorney guardians there's no attorney-client privilege. There's no ability to cross–examine witnesses, to subpoena evidence, to appeal. Basically you serve completely at the pleasure of the judge. And if you don't please the judge, you're history. What more of a message do kids need?”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Tom McPheeters and Ellen Becker's interview as published by the Journal For Living, Number 21, 2000.

Pleasure , History

“The EU cannot be a world player. It is trying to mould 28 distinctly different member countries together to form and enact policy, whilst also looking to bring in new countries whose views and politics will not necessarily be a natural fit to what we have today, to the detriment of sections of its citizenship. This makes the EU look and act weakly, a trait that has been seized upon by Putin for one, and which has now led to intentionally breaking international law. Far from guaranteeing peace as envisaged at the outset, the EU brings us, both politically and physically, closer to new conflicts, at home and abroad.”

James Carver (1969) British MEP for UKIP

Why The EU Can't Be A World Player http://www.jamescarver.org/Why_The_EU_Cant_Be_A_World_Player--post--69.html (2013)

World , Peace , Home , Nature

“Why, reader, truly, if they asked thee or me, Which way we meant to vote?—were it not our likeliest answer: Neither way! I, as a Tenpound Franchiser, will receive no bribe; but also I will not vote for either of these men. Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle shall, by furtherance of mine, go and make laws for this country. I will have no hand in such a mission. How dare I! If other men cannot be got in England, a totally other sort of men, different as light is from dark, as star-fire is from street-mud, what is the use of votings, or of Parliaments in England?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men , Way , Star , Light

“…it is recognised in England that home drinking is no real pleasure. We pray in a church and booze in a pub: profoundly sacerdotal at heart, we need a host in both places to preside over us. In Catholic churches as in continental bars the host is there all the time. But the Church of England kicked out the Real Presence and the licensing laws gave the landlord a terrible sacramental power. Ted was giving me grace of his own free will, holding back death – which is closing time – making a lordly grant of extra life.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Life , Death , Pleasure , Home

“At one end of the spectrum are the terrorist gangs within our borders, and the terrorist states which finance and arm them. At the other are the Hard Left operating inside our system, conspiring to use union power and the apparatus of local government to break, defy and subvert the law.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

The Second Carlton Lecture (26 November 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=105799
Second term as Prime Minister

“The organization of economic activity through voluntary exchange presumes that we have provided, through government, for the maintenance of law and order to prevent coercion of one individual by another, the enforcement of contracts voluntarily entered into, the definition of the meaning of property rights, the interpretation and enforcement of such rights, and the provision of a monetary framework.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 27

“Marie Farrar: month of birth, April
Died in the Meissen penitentiary
An unwed mother, judged by the law, she will
Show you how all that lives, lives frailly.
You who bear your sons in laundered linen sheets
And call your pregnancies a "blessed" state
Should never damn the outcast and the weak:
Her sin was heavy, but her suffering great.
Therefore, I beg, make not your anger manifest
For all that lives needs help from all the rest.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Of the infanticide Marie Farrar" [Von der Kindesmörderin Marie Farrar] (1920) from Devotions (1922-1927); trans. Sidney H. Bremer in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 92
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Birth , Suffering , Help , Anger

“[I am] A Subject and born to obey laws…The trial of all laws only consisteth in honest and probable witness.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1485–1540) English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Source: Letter to Henry VIII (30 June 1540), quoted in Roger Bigelow Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Volume II: Letters from 1536, Notes, Index (1902), p. 273

“I recognize that the findings in our report may leave some to wonder how the department’s findings can differ so sharply from some of the initial, widely reported accounts of what transpired. I want to emphasize that the strength and integrity of America’s justice system has always rested on its ability to deliver impartial results in precisely these types of difficult circumstances – adhering strictly to the facts and the law, regardless of assumptions. Yet it remains not only valid – but essential – to question how such a strong alternative version of events was able to take hold so swiftly, and be accepted so readily.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Justice , Question , Strong

“In 1763 a Croatian Jesuit named Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711 - 1787) identified the ultimate implication of this mechanical atomic theory. One of the crucial aspects of Isaac Newton's laws of motion is their predictive capability. If we know how an object is moving at any instant - how fast, and in which direction - and if, furthermore, we know the forces acting on it, we can calculate its future trajectory exactly. This predictability made it possible for astronomers to use Newton's laws of motion and gravity to calculate, for example, when future solar eclipses would happen.
Boscovich realized that if all the world is just atoms in motion and collision, then an all-seeing mind "could, from a continuous arc described in an interval of time, no matter how small, by all points of matter, derive the law [that is, a universal map] of forces itself … Now, if the law of forces were known, and the position, velocity and direction of all the points at any given instant, it would be possible for a mind of this type to foresee all the necessary subsequent motions and states, and to predict all the phenomena that necessarily followed from them."”

Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) Croat-Italian physicist

Philip Ball, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (2006).

World , Universe , Time , Future

“Hacking is the clever circumvention of imposed limits, whether imposed by your government, your IP server, your own personality, or the laws of physics.”

Jude Milhon (1939–2003) American hacker & author

The Joy of Hacker Sex http://www.dvara.net/hk/jude/TheJoyEn.html

Personality

“The question is, whether, like the Divine Child in the Temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom, and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we are feeling more of its sacred law; and whether, having left behind the priests and the scribes and the doctors and the fathers, we are about our Father's business, and becoming wise to God.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 617.

Life , Wisdom , God , Feeling

“What security have you for your own safety if every man of vile temper, of low instincts, of base purpose, can find in his own heart a higher law than that which is the rule of society, the Constitution, and the Bible? These higher-law preachers should be tarred and feathered, and whipped by those they have thus instigated. This, my friends, is what was called in good old revolutionary times, Lynch Law. It is sometimes the very best law, because it deals summary justice upon those who would otherwise escape from all other kinds of punishment.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech in New York, 1858.
1850s

Justice , Time , Heart

“I reproach myself for a gross error. But I would reproach myself more if I had persisted in an error after observations revealed it clearly to be that. I made a deal of money in the late 1940s on the bull side, ignoring Satchel Paige’s advice to Lot’s wife, “Never look back.” Rather I would advocate Samuelson’s Law: “Always look back. You may learn something from your residuals. Usually one’s forecasts are not so good as one remembers them; the difference may be instructive.” The dictum “If you must forecast, forecast often,” is neither a joke nor a confession of impotence. It is a recognition of the primacy of brute fact over pretty theory. That part of the future that cannot be related to the present’s past is precisely what science cannot hope to capture. Fortunately, there is plenty of work for science to do, plenty of scientific tasks not yet done.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

February 1985, in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
1980s–1990s

Money , Hope , Error , Learning

“Although founded on majority rule, a democratic society must recognize and apply individual, minority and group rights. In other words, majority rule must be understood within the context of the rule of law and human dignity… This resolves the tension between populism and human rights, since democracy must not be abused to diminish human rights, e. g. by legitimizing torture or capital punishment, even if public opinion could be invoked or manipulated to demand it. Thus, it is necessary to strengthen the enforcement of national and regional bills of rights to provide a process and atmosphere for democracy to flourish, ensured by an independent judiciary that provides the necessary protection of both majority and minority interests.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas 2013 Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order
2013

Democracy

“As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state — to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support.”

Herbert Spencer book Social Statics

Pt. III, Ch. 19 : The Right to Ignore the State, § 1 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/273#lf0331_label_200
Social Statics (1851)
Context: As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state — to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man’s property against his will, is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment — a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.

Support , Freedom

“Sistani's office refuses the replacement of the law [which excludes former Baath Party members from returning to public life] because it is not an Iraqi demand but it is a political demand to please some sides.”

Ali Sistani (1930) Iranian-Iraqi Muslim scholar

Top Iraqi Shi'ite cleric rejects Baathist law, 2 April 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL0229955320070402?pageNumber=1,
Former Baathists

Life

“As an attorney, I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather… the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it — very loose, the line of the law — so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always — short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder — safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.”

Dean Koontz book Watchers

Part 1, Chapter 7.8; Garrison Dilworth reassuring the Cornells during their flight
Watchers (1987)

Way

“Clearly, the court today has ignored the constitutional right and responsibility of Congress to pass laws protecting citizens from dangerous and addictive narcotics…”

Bob Barr (1948) Republican and Libertarian politician

Press release (28 March 2002), as quoted in "Barr to Continue Fight Against Drug Legalization" http://www.mpp.org/legislation/dc/bills/barr-to-continue-fight-against-drug-legalization.html, MPP.
2000s, 2002

“The slave is a man, "the image of God," but "a little lower than the angels;" possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of a God. It is such a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish men from things, and persons from property. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over his victim.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The Nature of Slavery. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester, December 1, 1850
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

Men , God , Fear , Hope

“The Irish had tough times, but little compares to the experience on our soil of black Americans. That experience should be part of every American’s consciousness, and law enforcement’s role in that experience—including in recent times—must be remembered. It is our cultural inheritance.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Time , Parting

“The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average.”

Charles Murray (1943) American libertarian political scientist, author, and columnist

Regarding the No Child Left Behind Act.
The Age of Educational Romanticism http://www.aei.org/article/27962, The New Criterion, Thursday, May 1, 2008.

Children