Quotes about laws
page 33

“Today, we will hear from federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, who will discuss the problem of ELF and ALF and law enforcement's reaction to their dangerous and destructive tactics. It is these tactics, particularly the widespread use of arson, which makes ELF and ALF the #1 domestic terror concern over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups.”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

Senate Hearing 109-947 before Committee on Environment and Public Works,
on the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front

Alcohol, Problem

“Unfortunately… the philosophy of Aristotle laid it down as a principle, that the celestial motions were regulated by laws proper to themselves, and bearing no affinity to those which prevail on earth. By thus drawing a broad and impassable line of separation between celestial and terrestrial mechanics, it placed the former altogether out of the pale of experimental research, while it at the same time impeded the progress of the latter by the assumption of principles respecting natural and unnatural motions, hastily adopted from the most superficial and cursory and remark, undeserving even the name of observation. Astronomy therefore continued for ages a science of mere record, in which theory had no part, except in so far as it attempted to conciliate the inequalities of the celestial motions with that assumed law of uniform circular revolution which was alone considered consistent with the perfection of the heavenly mechanism.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

Source: A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), Ch.3 Of Cosmical Phenomena

Age, Nature, Science, Time

“What we cannot express by the art of thinking, by the art of Science or philosophy or logic, we can and should express by the poetic, visual, or some other arts. It is for that reason that I consider morals and aesthetics one and the same; for they cover only one impulse, one drive inherent in our consciousness - to bring our life and all our actions into a satisfactory relationship with the events of the world, as our consciousness want it to be, in harmony with our life and according to the laws of consciousness itself - Naum Gabo”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote from The Quotable Artist, by Peggy Hadden; Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2010; not paged
undated

Life, World, Art, Thinking

“The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth.”

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

4 March 1831
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)

God, Truth, Disease, Religion

“Materialism in its literal sense is long since dead. …It is …belief in the universal dominance of scientific law which is nowadays generally meant by materialism.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Sense, Universe, Dead

“I feel that the rule of law must be upheld. I simply will not accept any apology until justice is done.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

October 2004
On her boycott of the "Fiji Week" reconciliation ceremonies

Justice, Feeling

“Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar.”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

"Not in every aspect," said Cugel.
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

“Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being…This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Introduction, Section II: Of the Nature of Laws in General
Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

God, Nature, Time, Dependency

“It is often mistakenly held that the key concept of Jesus' ethic is the "Golden Rule": "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This is stated by Jesus, however, not as the sum of his own teaching but as the center of the law (Mark 12:28-29, Matt. 22:40, citing Lev. 19:15). But Jesus' own "fulfillment" of this thrust of the law, which thereby becomes through his own work a "new commandment" (John 13:34, 15:12, 1 John 2:18) is different, "Do as I have done to you" or "do as the Father did in sending his Son."”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Politics of Jesus (1972), p. 119

“Mr. Astaire is the nearest approach we are ever likely to have to a human Mickey Mouse; he might have been drawn by Mr. Walt Disney, with his quick physical wit, his incredible agility. He belongs to a fantasy world almost as free as Mickey's from the law of Gravity.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Graham Greene reviewing Follow the Fleet in The Spectator 1936 and quoted in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 , p. 81.

World

“In ancient and medieval India, no Hindu priest would subjugate himself to the rule of law. That was the basic reason why no Hindu institution could evolve a spiritual democratic culture within the religion. We are now living in a borrowed system of political democracy.”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

"Hinduism And Its Moral Dilemma" in Tehelka (29 January 2005) http://www.tehelka.com/2005/01/hinduism-and-its-moral-dilemma/.

Religion, Democracy

“Economists, firstly, regard only one part of man's nature, and treat him simply as a money-making animal; secondly, they disregard the influence of custom, and only take account of competition. Certain laws are laid down under these assumptions; as, for instance, that the rate of wages always tends to an equality, the permanent difference obtaining in various employments being only sufficient to balance the favourable or unfavourable circumstances attending each of them — a law which is only true after a certain stage of civilisation and in so far as the acquisition of wealth is the sole object of men.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 28-29

Men, Money, Nature, Animals

“A society cannot be Islamic if it expels the civil and religious Laws of Islam from its codes and customs, so that nothing of Islam is left except rites and ceremonials.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

Source: Social Justice in Islam (1953), p. 26

“Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book IV, ch. 14 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch14.asp: Of Homicide. Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

Life, Nature, Personality

“I said: "Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!" He was hilarious: "That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Conversation with Whitman (4 July 1889) as quoted in With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906) by Horace Traubel, Vol. IV

Life, Beauty, Game

“In the marketplace he told of honor, and how it is a higher law than any law.
At the crossroads he talked of freedom, the freedom of the wind and clouds, and freedom that loves all things and is without guilt.
Beside the city gates he told stories of the forgotten cities that were and of the forgotten cities that might be, if only men would forget them.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"The God and His Man", Asimov's Science Fiction, 1980, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Endangered Species (1989), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Love, Men, Freedom, Forgetting

“During the Cretaceous Period many of the inland seas dried up, leaving the Plesiosaurs stranded without any fish. Just about that time Mother Nature scrapped the whole Age of Reptiles and called for a new deal. And you can see what she got. [Footnote: Here we see the working of another Law of Nature: No water, no fish. ]”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Plesiosaur
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Age, Nature, Fish, Water

“Against the many Russian thinkers influenced by Hegel who believed that history was governed by universal laws to which one could only submit, Turgenev upheld the freedom of different societies to pursue different paths of development and of individuals to pursue, even in opposition to powerful historical forces, their own goals and values. Here Turgenev endorsed the celebrated dictum of Alexander Herzen, with whom he disagreed on other matters: that history has no libretto. Human history is a realm of contingency and unpredictability, in which each generation faces conflicts that have no ideal solution.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.105)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

History, Freedom, Universe

“There remains the ordinary Communist solution. This has taken various forms; the simplest being a voluntary association of individuals based on the principle of common property, and in which every person works for the community according to fixed rules. There are many successful instances of this, on a small scale, in the United States, but we cannot suppose such a solution to be possible for society as a whole. It has only been tried with picked materials, whereas our object is rather to improve the great mass of the population. The Communism of recent European theorists, of whom the best known is Lassalle, presents a somewhat different aspect. It aims at the appropriation of all instruments of production by the State, which is to take charge of the whole national industry and direct it. But the practical difficulty of such a scheme is obviously overwhelming. The objections to a Communistic solution do not apply to Socialism in a more modified shape. Historically speaking, Socialism has already shown itself in England in the extension of State interference. It has produced the Factory Laws, and it is now beginning to advance further and interfere directly in the division of produce between the workmen and their employers”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 150

Communication, Success, Personality

“The rise of new science in the seventeenth century laid hold upon general culture in the next century. The enlightenment… testified to the widespread belief that at last light had dawned, that dissipation of ignorance, superstition, and bigotry was at hand, and the triumph of reason was assured -- for reason was counterpart in man of the laws of nature which science was disclosing. The reign of law in the natural world was to be followed by the reign of law in human affairs.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

World, Nature, Light, Science

“We must recognize that in our generation there might come a day with no remaining avenue of escape. State laws can be avoiding simply by moving, but what of unconstitutional Federal laws? At that point we will have no choice but to rebel against tyranny. (Since the alternative would be to live as little better than bleating sheep.) When we reach that juncture I doubt that I will advocate expatriation. Most foreign lands have less freedom than we enjoy here in these United States. I don't think that I will find some ideal "bolt hole" nation with more firearms freedom, better banking privacy, a more positive business climate, lower taxes, full religious freedom, unimpeded personal property rights, fair courts, and assured freedom of speech. If I must die, then I will do so here in America, fully armed and facing my oppressors. I won't die in some ditch, begging for mercy.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Letter Re: Drawing the Line on Noncompliance with Unconstitutional Laws https://survivalblog.com//?s=noncompliance, Survivalblog, 11 June 2013

Business, Thinking, Freedom, Personality

“No man e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law.”

John Trumbull (poet) (1750–1831) American poet

Canto iii, line 489.
McFingal (1775-1782)

Drawing

“In the universe where everything works the way it common-sensically ought to, everything about the study of Artificial General Intelligence is driven by the one overwhelming fact of the indescribably huge effects: initial conditions and unfolding patterns whose consequences will resound for as long as causal chains continue out of Earth, until all the stars and galaxies in the night sky have burned down to cold iron, and maybe long afterward, or forever into infinity if the true laws of physics should happen to permit that. To deliberately thrust your mortal brain onto that stage, as it plays out on ancient Earth the first root of life, is an act so far beyond "audacity" as to set the word on fire, an act which can only be excused by the terrifying knowledge that the empty skies offer no higher authority.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Above-Average AI Scientists http://lesswrong.com/lw/uc/aboveaverage_ai_scientists/

Life, Way, Star, Intelligence

“An universal custom is a law, and I know no distinction between lex mercatoria and consuetudo mercaborum.”

John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) (1642–1710) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England

Cramlington v. Evans (1680), Show. 4.

Universe

“There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that’s philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that’s science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy’s Law, sometimes offset in part by Brewster’s Factor: that’s engineering.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XLVIII : L’Envoi or Rev. XXII: 13, p. 508

School, Universe, Science, Change

“I’m committed to defending DAPA and DACA. I’m committed to going even further to get more people deferred action, to go as far as I can under the law. And I am committed to introducing comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship in the first 100 days of my presidency.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

People

“Therefore our Constitution will always be the measure of our national morality; and if we were all sorry, it would still be true. I am not sorry, for it founds the government in the character of the people, and hence everything in the future depends upon the popular faith in the original principles of the government. If the people of this country do believe with the fathers that there are self-evident, original, and indefeasible human rights, then slavery will surely, quietly, and legally be terminated, under the Constitution of the United States. If they do not believe that there are such rights, then slavery will, just as surely, quietly, and legally, be established under the Constitution, which, as the paramount law of the land, will legalize it in New York as well as in Alabama, leaving the policy of adopting it to be decided by individual judgment.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People, Faith, Future, Dependency

“I have made the complete return [from imagination] to nature, and nature is, as we all know, primarily an intellectual idea. I am satisfied that painting also is like nature, an intellectual idea, and that the laws of nature as presented to the mind through the eye and the eye is the painter's first and last vehicle are the means of transport to the real mode of thought: the only legitimate source of aesthetic experience for the intelligent painter.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

n.p.
1921 - 1930, Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928

Imagination, Intelligence, Idea, Nature

“An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)

“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Preface
Hellas (1821)

Religion, Art, Literature

“Difficult days lie ahead, but Britain will face them in the conviction that our cause is just and in the knowledge that we have been doing everything reasonable to secure a negotiated settlement. The principles that we are defending are fundamental to everything that this Parliament and this country stand for. They are the principles of democracy and the rule of law…Britain has a responsibility towards the islanders to restore their democratic way of life. She has a duty to the whole world to show that aggression will not succeed and to uphold the cause of freedom.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (20 May 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104943 First term as Prime Minister

Life, Lie, World, Way

“In every sound convert the judgment is brought to approve of the laws and ways of Christ, and subscribe to them as most righteous and reasonable; the desire of the heart is to know the whole mind of Christ; the free and resolved choice of the heart is determined for the ways of Christ, before all the pleasures of sin, and prosperities of the world; it is the daily care of his life to walk with God.”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 163.

Life, God, Pleasure, World

“It is not simply that a clear understanding is acquired of the movements of the great bodies which we regard as the system of the world, but it is that we are introduced to a perception of laws governing the motion of all matter, from the finest particle of dust to the largest planet or sun, with a degree of uniformity and constancy, which otherwise we could hardly have conceived. Astronomy is pre-eminently the science of order.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

World, Understanding, Science, Sun

“As a result of this excessive reliance on ticketing, today, the city generates a significant amount of revenue from the enforcement of code provisions. Along with taxes and other revenue streams, in 2010, the city collected over $1.3 million in fines and fees collected by the court. For fiscal year 2015, Ferguson’s city budget anticipates fine revenues to exceed $3 million – more than double the total from just five years prior. Our review of the evidence, and our conversations with police officers, have shown that significant pressure is brought to bear on law enforcement personnel to deliver on these revenue increases. Once the system is primed for maximizing revenue – starting with fines and fine enforcement – the city relies on the police force to serve, essentially, as a collection agency for the municipal court rather than a law enforcement entity focused primarily on maintaining and promoting public safety. And a wide variety of tactics, including disciplinary measures, are used to ensure certain levels of ticketing by individual officers, regardless of public safety needs.”

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

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

“Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science."
And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?"; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves"…
Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory "contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...
Huxley's commentary on the Samuel Wilberforce review of the Origin of Species in the Quarterly Review.
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

Life, Men, Truth, Age

“I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister, in a solemn hour of the life of our country, of our Empire, of our Allies, and, above all, of the cause of Freedom. … I am sure I speak for all when I say we are ready to face it; to endure it; and to retaliate against it—to any extent that the unwritten laws of war permit. There will be many men and women in this Island who when the ordeal comes upon them, as come it will, will feel comfort, and even a pride, that they are sharing the perils of our lads at the Front—soldiers, sailors and airmen, God bless them—and are drawing away from them a part at least of the onslaught they have to bear. Is not this the appointed time for all to make the utmost exertions in their power?”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (19 May 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 363
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Life, Women, Men, God

“Departmental reorganization. One way to save public money would be to pass the pending bill for the reorganization of the various departments. This project has been pending for some time, and has had the most careful consideration of experts and the thorough study of a special congressional committee. This legislation is vital as a companion piece to the Budget law. Legal authority for a thorough reorganization of the Federal structure with some latitude of action to the Executive in the rearrangement of secondary functions would make for continuing economy in the shift of government activities which must follow every change in a developing country. Beyond this many of the independent agencies of the Government must be placed under responsible Cabinet officials, if we are to have safeguards of efficiency, economy, and probity.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Money, Way, Study, Change

“So important, indeed, is the use of maps in geographic work, that, without wishing to propose any new law, it seems fair to suggest to the geographer a ready rule of thumb to test the geographic quality of any study he is making: if his problem cannot be studied fundamentally by maps - usually by a comparison of several maps - then it is questionable whether or not it is within the field of geography.”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

Source: The Nature of Geography (1939), p. 425

Question, Problem, Study

“Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Legal Fiction" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 37.
The Complete Poems

Men

“Of course, Charlie and I can identify only a few Inevitables, even after a lifetime of looking for them. Leadership alone provides no certainties: Witness the shocks some years back at General Motors, IBM and Sears, all of which had enjoyed long periods of seeming invincibility. Though some industries or lines of business exhibit characteristics that endow leaders with virtually insurmountable advantages, and that tend to establish Survival of the Fattest as almost a natural law, most do not. Thus, for every Inevitable, there are dozens of Impostors, companies now riding high but vulnerable to competitive attacks.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1996 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1996.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Business, Nature

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love, Life, Death, God

“Inconvenience arising from the operation of an Act of Parliament can be no ground of argument in a Court of law.”

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley (1744–1804) British judge and politician

Grigby v. Oakes (1801), 1 Bos. & Pull. 528.

“Passing laws and creating bureaus cannot add one jot to human happiness; … governments habitually engage in aggression, grand larceny, cheating, lying, counterfeiting, bullying, meddling and other pursuits immediately recognized, in the private sphere, as nasty and immoral. Why don't people compare political promises with government results?”

Roger Lea MacBride (1929–1995) American writer, TV producer, and politician; 1976 Libertarian Party candidate for President

A New Dawn for America: The Libertarian Challenge, paperback version (1976) p. 93. U guys this is fake notes

Happiness, People, Lying, Cheating

“I say that some things can be said to belong to the law of nature in two ways: One way is as first practical principles known from their terms or as conclusions necessarily entailed by them. These are said to belong to the natural law in the strictest sense, and there can be no dispensation in their regard… But this is not the case when we speak in general of all the precepts of the second table. For the reasons behind the commands and prohibitions there are not practical principles that are necessary in an unqualified sense, nor are they simply necessary conclusions from such. For they contain no goodness such as is necessarily prescribed for attaining the goodness of the ultimate end, nor in what is forbidden is there such malice as would turn one away necessarily from the last end, for even if the good found in these [precepts] were not commanded, the ultimate end could still be loved and attained, whereas if the evil proscribed by them were not forbidden, it would still be consistent with the acquisition of the ultimate end.”

Duns Scotus (1265–1308) Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic blessed

Scotus (c. 1300), Ordinatio 3.37 as cited in: Peter A. (2004) "Kwasniewski William of Ockham and the Metaphysical Roots of Natural Law" in: The Aquinas Review, 2004

Love, Way, Nature, Sense

“You have Palestinians living in Israel with full political rights. You don’t have discriminatory laws against them, I mean not letting them swim on certain beaches or anything like that. I think it's unfair to call Israel an apartheid state. If Kerry did so, I think he made a mistake.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

As quoted in "South Africa's de Klerk: Israel not an apartheid state" http://www.timesofisrael.com/south-africas-de-klerk-israel-not-an-apartheid-state/#ixzz3GrpjBXBe (27 May 2014), The Times of Israel 2010s, 2014

Thinking

“Laws are made with such attention to protecting women that, if a man's constitutional rights conflict with a woman's protection, his rights disintegrate before her protection disintegrates.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 237.

Women

“When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Obscurity of the Poet," Harvard University lecture (15 August 1950) delivered at the Harvard University Summer School Conference on the Defense of Poetry (August 14-17, 1950); reprinted in Partisan Review, XVIII (January/February 1951) and published in Poetry and the Age (1953)
General sources
Variant: When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.

Life, Death, Wisdom, Imagination

“It was impossible to keep up the great movement of inner and outer freedom initiated by Jesus. The proclamation “You are free through the Holy Spirit,” and Paul’s statement, “Everything is lawful,” were fine for a small, elite group in which everyone knew everyone else. But when it was a matter of thousands of new converts whose depth of faith could not be known, how could they be told that they were completely free to choose their way of life and decide their own conduct? They had to be incorporated and put under the authority of a head of each group, and the more numerous they became, the more sacred and complex this authority had to be. … The glorious freedom that is in Christ could not be tolerated. It was replaced by clear and strict commandments.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), pp. 36-37

Life, Faith, Way, Freedom

“Like other German theorists of the state, Carl Schmitt held to the idea that politics is always about violence; if we really and truly disagree with other people, we ought to treat them as enemies. Fish does not follow Schmitt this far. To be sure, he fills his books with examples of people who ought to, and usually do, hate each other: secular liberals dealing with religious fundamentalists; full-stop opponents of affirmative action confronting those who support it; defenders of speech codes and critics of hate-crime laws.”

Alan Wolfe (1942) American political scientist

The Future of Liberalism (2009), Ch. 5 : Mr. Schmitt Goes to Washington

Hate, People, Books, Idea

“Art is a spiritual function of man, which aims at freeing him from life's chaos. Art is free in the use of its means in any way it likes, but is bound to its laws and to its laws alone. The minute it becomes art, it becomes much more sublime than a class distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Manifesto Proletkult, 1923
Schwitters, in discussion with political Dadaists as Huelsenbeck.
1920s

Life, Art, Way

“Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don’t have to obey their own laws.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, China’s ‘Mozart’ Drops Off State Hit Parade, 2010

“Thou art Justice — ne'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England — thou
Shield'st alike the high and low.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 57
(1819)

Justice, Art

“A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist.”

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

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 34

Family, Game

“Given Steve Jobs, for instance, is critical to Apple's success is there anything short of eating live babies on national TV that he should be fired for? Where would you draw that line or should he be held to the same rules and laws that the rest of us are held to?”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Mark Hurd falls, could Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs be next? http://tgdaily.com/opinion/51025-mark-hurd-falls-could-larry-ellison-and-steve-jobs-be-next in TG Daily (10 August 2010)

Success, Baby, Drawing

“The espionage is illegal, and I think that it breaks from the climate of harmony and cordiality we should have among our nations and peoples. Given everything that is now known, and the position of other heads of state on this issue, we hope that the United States, with humbleness, will recognize [the error of] what it did and avoid such actions from now on. And if there have been violations of international law, penalties should take place.”

Enrique Peña Nieto (1966) 57th President of Mexico

Foreign Affairs interview (January 2014)

People, Penalty, Hope, Error

“I bought a copy of the Nashville Tennessean out of a metal box, just to see what was happening in the world. The principal story indicated that the state legislature, in one of those moments of enlightenment with which the southern states often strive to distinguish themselves, was in the process of passing a law forbidding schools from teaching evolution. Instead they were to be required to instruct that that the earth was created by God, in seven days, sometime, oh, before the turn of the century. The article reminded us that this was not a new issue in Tennessee. The little town of Dayton—not far from where Katz and I now sat, as it happened—was the scene of the famous Scopes trial in 1925, when the state prosecuted a schoolteacher named John Thomas Scopes for rashly promulgating Darwinian hogwash. As nearly everyone knows, Clarence Darrow, for the defense, roundly humiliated William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, but what most people don’t realize is that Darrow lost the case. Scopes was convicted, and the law wasn’t overturned in Tennessee until 1967. And now the state was about to bring the law back, proving conclusively that the danger for Tennesseans isn’t so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (pp. 107-108)

God, People, World, School

“The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves.”

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

1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)

Thinking, Dead

“Before anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything that always is or will ever be. He is the Eternal and embraces all times. He knows profoundly all events and He himself is everything. He creates everything beyond any beginning of time and beyond any limit of place and space. He is not subject to any numerical law, or to any law of measure or order. He himself is law, number, measure, limit without limit, end without end, act without form.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

VIII 2, as quoted in The Acentric Labyrinth (1995) by Ramon Mendoza
De immenso (1591)

Time

“I say that such qualities were never more needed in the word. Let us hold on to what we are; let us not try to be like anybody else…With our pertinacity, our love of freedom, our love of ordered freedom, our respect for law, our respect for the individual and our power of combining in service; indeed, in our strength and in our weakness, I believe, from my heart, that our people are fitted to pass through whatever trials may be before us, and to emerge—if they are true to their own best traditions—a greater people in the future than they have been in the past.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 14.
1933

Love, People, Freedom, Past

“Then I realised that it really is a philosophy that we're talking about, you know—the nonaggression axiom, that the government should be bound by the same moral laws that the rest of us are. Once you realise that, you're like, "Oh!" Your entire world opens up, and then your entire paradigm changes.”

Glenn Jacobs (1967) American professional wrestler and actor

05:52&#8211;06:08. "WWE Wrestler Kane Talks Libertarianism, and His Heroes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqUIwu8nuc (2013)

World, Change

“Of the systems above us, angelic and seraphic, we know little; but we see one law, simple, efficient, and comprehensive as that of gravitation,— the law of love,— extending its sway over the whole of God's dominions, living where He lives, embracing every moral movement in its universal authority, and producing the same harmony, where it is obeyed as we observe in the movements of nature.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 393.

Love, God, Angels, Nature

“The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution…. There should be, therefore, great resistance to … redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily takes to itself further authority to govern the country without express constitutional authority.”

Byron White (1917–2002) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, American football player

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986).

Country

“We must foster in us the awareness that the actual laws are, on the whole, something limited and that there is always need of integration and correction, and this attention to possible changes must be kept especially in regard to more important things. Citizens often use the opposite method: they disobey the small laws, and they obey the important ones. They have not widened their spirit to look above all at these last ones, which at times are unjust impositions. Then disobedience to these becomes a witness.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

‘In Remembrance of Aldo Capitini’
Hymn

Change, Time

“[Speaking to a crowd regarding the sale of tribal land to the US Government] My friends, you have all heard what my father-in-law says, but I do not think he is right. He believes what the white people tell him; but this is only another trick of the whites to take our land away from us, and they have played these tricks before. We do not want to trust the white people. They come to use with sweet talk, but they do not mean it. We will not sign any more papers for these white men.”

Hollow Horn Bear (1850–1913) 19th century Lakota chief and policeman

[Standing Bear, Luther, My People the Sioux, November 1, 2006, University of Nebraska Press, 9780803293328, 211-12, https://books.google.com/books?id=ltSXg-abnU4C, 1 March 2018]

Men, People, Thinking

“I truly do believe, if all of us do all that we can, that we will once again, in our time, restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law, I just know in my heart of hearts that this will be the generation that restores life in America.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

Excerpt from a speech addressed to a pro-life group in Nashville, Tennessee — https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mike-pence-says-making-abortion-illegal-saves-lives-history-proves-ncna853031 (February 27, 2018) Vice President of the United States (2017-Present)

Life, Time, Heart

“We must account for that inheritance. And we, especially those of us who enjoy the privilege that comes with being the majority, must confront the biases that are inescapable parts of the human condition. We must speak the truth about our shortcomings as law enforcement, and fight to be better. But as a country, we must also speak the truth to ourselves. Law enforcement is not the root cause of problems in our hardest hit neighborhoods. Police officers, people of enormous courage and integrity, in the main, are in those neighborhoods, risking their lives, to protect folks from offenders who are the product of problems that will not be solved by body cameras.”

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

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People, Truth, Courage, Problem

“When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.”

Jack Kevorkian (1928–2011) American pathologist, euthanasia activist

Quoted in "Words of Wisdom‎" - by Mick Farren - Philosophy - 2004 - Page 122
2000s, 2004

“The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part of your furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, the woman is not, to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man; therefore abridge, cut, file this article as you choose; she is in every sense yours.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

La femme est une propriété que l'on acquiert par contrat, elle est mobilière, car la possession vaut titre; enfin, la femme n'est, à proprement parler, qu'une annexe de l'homme; or, tranchez, coupez, rognez, elle vous appartient à tous les titres.
Part II, Meditation Number XII: The Hygiene of Marriage.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Sense, Parting

“It is clear to me that my life has become completely unmanageable because I am addicted to alcohol and drugs.
Recently, I relapsed and did things for which I am ashamed. I broke the law, and today I took responsibility by pleading guilty to the charges in my case.”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

As quoted in "Lindsay: "I Am Addicted to Alcohol and Drugs" at TMZ (23 August 2007) http://www.tmz.com/2007/08/23/lindsay-lohan-i-am-addicted-to-alcohol-and-drugs/8.

Life, Alcohol

“REGIME VALUES. An expression used frequently in public administration literature to denote the fundamental principles of a polity which, ordinarily, should guide administrative behavior. Although the term applies in principle to any polity, de facto it appears almost exclusively in literature focused on the United States. The expression entered the public administration literature in the first edition of this author’s Ethics for Bureaucrats: An Essay on Law and Values.”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

John Rohr (1998), "Regime values." In J. M. Shafritz (ed.), International encyclopedia of public policy and administration. Westview Press. p. 1929

Behavior, Literature, Appearance

“Those who believe that the laws of nature are the creations of a beneficent and all-wise Intelligence will see in this exception to the general law in the case of freezing water a striking evidence of design. But those who have no such belief will say it is a most fortunate though fortuitous circumstance (a saying they will have to make, regarding thousands of other things in nature), and go on floundering in the interminable sea of "I don't know."”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Familiar Talks on Science, Volume 1, 1899, p. 196
Nature's Miracles (1900)

Intelligence, Nature, Water, Sea

“Law taught me how to argue passionately and rationally. That’s key to being a successful environmental campaigner. If you are too emotional you run the risk of turning off policy makers. And if you can’t present your arguments rationally, no one will listen to you.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Passion, Success

“The controversy between rule of law and rule of men was never relevant to women — because, along with juveniles, imbeciles, and other classes of legal nonpersons, they had no access to law except through men.”

Freda Adler (1934) Criminologist, educator

Source: Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (1975), P. 203.

Women, Men

“Most probably some law hitherto undiscovered exists.”

Arthur Schuster (1851–1934) Anglo-German physicist

commenting the misunderstood law governing the spectral lines in light, in [Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Volume 31, Royal Society, 1881, 343]

“Luther did not consider the claims of the peasants as in the least unjust; indeed, he admitted that they were "not contrary to natural law or to equity". But, unconscious apostle of bourgeois interests, he immediately added: "No one is judge in his own cause, and the faults committed by authority cannot excuse rebellion."”

Francesco Saverio Nitti (1868–1953) Italian economist and political figure

Source: Catholic Socialism (1895), pp. 75-76

Nature

“If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists. This norm is not at all a punishment or a discrimination against the divorced and remarried, but rather expresses an objective situation that of itself renders impossible the reception of Holy Communion: '… If these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Letter to bishops, Sept. 14, 1994
1990s

God, Marriage, People, Faith

“Monogamy has a sentimental basis which is quite distinct from the political one of equal numbers of the sexes. Equal numbers in the sexes are quite compatible with a change of partners every day or every hour. Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves, and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock. Accordingly, the people whose conception of marriage is a farm-yard or slave-quarter conception are always more or less in a panic lest the slightest relaxation of the marriage laws should utterly demoralize society; whilst those to whom marriage is a matter of more highly evolved sentiments and needs (sometimes said to be distinctively human, though birds and animals in a state of freedom evince them quite as touchingly as we) are much more liberal, knowing as they do that monogamy will take care of itself provided the parties are free enough, and that promiscuity is a product of slavery and not of liberty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface: "The Personal Sentimental Basis of Monogamy" http://www.enotalone.com/article/13714.html 1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Women, Men, Marriage, Children

“My poem (Love -Kisses XL1) is like a nugget of gold or clump of earth it contains within itself the seeds rhetoric, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, geography, music, astronomy, medicine, nature, law, writing”

Quirinus Kuhlmann (1651–1689) German poet and mystic

Love-Kiss XL1

Love, Music, Mathematics, Kiss

“Everything in the varying human affairs is due to chance, according to Aristotle, to the Divine Will alone according to the Ashariyah, to Divine Wisdom according to the Mu'tazilites, to the merits of man according to our opinion. It is therefore possible, according to the Ashariyah, that God inflicts pain on a good and pious man in this world, and eeps him forever in fire, which is assumed to rage in the world to come; they simply say it is the will of God. The Mu'tazilites would consider this an injustice, and therefore assume that every being, even an ant, that is stricken with pain, has compensation for it… and it is due to God's Wisdom, that a being is struck and afflicted in order to receive compensation. We, however, believe that all these human affairs are managed with justice; far be it from God to do wrong, to punish any one unless the punishment is necessary and merited. It is distinctly stated in the Law, that all is done in accordance with justice; and the words of our Sages generally express the same idea.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

Wisdom, God, Pain, World

“It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age. Science builds its structure of hypothetical "elements" and laws of their behavior, touching on reality at crucial points.... But the historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Philosophy in a New Key (1941)

Age, Behavior, Reality, Sense

“Many of us believed in the possibility of a principled explanation for the laws of nature. We hoped to discover a short list of principles, which could be realized in a unique theory, which would retrodict the standard model and uniquely predict the physics to be discovered beyond it. The shocking implication of the results of Strominger reported in 1986 was that it was not to be, at least within the confines of string theory. …String theory offered more, however… It offered the promise of a setting in which the different perturbative string theories are realized as expansions around solutions of a still more fundamental theory. …That more fundamental theory would have to be background independent…”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"A perspective on the landscape problem" arXiv (Feb 15, 2012)

Hope, Nature

“There is no other foundation on which freedom has ever found a permanent abiding place. We shall have to make our decision whether we wish to maintain our present institutions, or whether we wish to exchange them for something else. If we permit some one to come to support us, we can not prevent some one coming to govern us. If we are too weak to take charge of our own mortality, we shall not be strong enough to take charge of our own liberty. If we can not govern ourselves, if we can not observe the law, nothing remains but to have some one else govern us, to have the law enforced against us, and to step down from the honorable abiding place of freedom to the ignominious abode of servitude.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Support, Decision, Freedom, Strong

“Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.”

Brooks Adams book The Law of Civilization and Decay

Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History (1895), p. 165.

Time

“I make known unto thee how He hath provided for the bodily health of us all, by having produced Æsculapius, the Preserver of the universe; and how he hath communicated to us virtue of every kind, by sending down Aphrodite in company with Athene for our guardian; having made it all but a law that no one should use copulation except for the end of generating his like. For this reason truly, according to his revolutions and seasons, do the various vegetable and animal races feel themselves stirred towards the generation of their kind. What need is there to magnify the glory of his rays, and of his light? A night without moon, and without stars, how terrible is it! Let anyone reflect on this, in order that he may estimate how great a blessing is the light we derive from the Sun!”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

Health, Feeling, Star, Communication

“I know what Claire is. You know I know it. I told you the first minute I met you. But did you ever stop to think it’s all worth it to me? Every time she makes a pass at another man, I know she’s comparing. She’s out on the open market, shopping. And being shopped for. I don’t have any collar around her neck She’s not tame. I’m not a habit to her. I’m not something she’s tied to by any law. And every time she winds up coming back to me, you know what that proves. It proves I’m still the toughest man in the pack. Because she wouldn’t stay if I wasn’t.”

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 5, Section 6 (p. 113)

Thinking, Time

“Every American should take note of those candidates who stand with the economic interests of America’s citizens, and who stand with the Rule of Law, by rejecting Amnesty in all its forms. It is wrong when Democrats seek to demean the intrinsic value of American citizenship by importing the Third World to replace the millions of voters their redistributionist policies and racial grievance politics have driven away. It is also wrong when Republican leadership conveniently chooses to waive the application of the law to guarantee a supply of unskilled and low-cost workers for their corporate benefactors.”

Steve King (1949) US Representative for Iowa

Rep. Steve King: ‘DACA’ – ‘Delivering Amnesty to Central Americans’ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/26/exclusive-rep-steve-king-daca-delivering-amnesty-central-americans/ (September 26, 2017)

World

“The equilibrium price level is determined at the point where the money market is in equilibrium. The temporary suspension of Walras' Law, far from making economic nonsense, thus appears as the crucial "trick" by which the tatonnement process is decomposed in two parts.
This analysis confirms that for a neoclassical general equilibrium system with neutral money there is indeed a consistent decomposition procedure, based on appropriate compensation principles, permitting the determination of real variables in the real sector while the price level is determined in the monetary sector. However, the amount of intellectual effort which, in the wake of Lange and Patinkin, was devoted to this issue, is entirely out of proportion to its economic significance. The real economic question is not whether a system can be dichotomized, but whether money is neutral.”

Jürg Niehans (1919–2007) Swiss economist

Source: The theory of money, 1978, p. 12

Money, Question, Effort, Appearance

“The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,—that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Men, Happiness, Truth, Age

“Settlements are supposed in law to be indifferent to paupers; though they are often in fact desirous of one in preference to another.”

John Eardley Wilmot (1709–1792) English judge

Rex v. Inhabitants of Burton-Bradstock (1765), Burrow (Settlement Cases), 535.

Indifference

“And this is the mission of the church — not civilization, but salvation — not better laws, purer legislation, social elevation, human equality, and liberty, but FIRST, the " kingdom of God and His righteousness;" regenerated hearts, and all other things will follow.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 149.

God, Heart

“If Britons love England with all her faults, why should we fail to love India whose faults were whittled down to an irreducible minimum till foreign conquests threw the whole society out of gear? But instead of being dominated by the natural ambition of carrying the banner of such a civilisation all over the world, we are unable to maintain its integrity in its own native home. This is betraying a trust. This is unworthiness of the worst type. We have not been able to add anything to this precious bequest; on the contrary we have been keeping ourselves and generations yet unborn from a full enjoyment of their lawful heritage….. This was Swami Vivekananda's plan of campaign. India can once more be made conscious of her greatness by an overmastering sense of the greatness of her spirituality. This sense of greatness is the main feeder of all patriotism. This only can put an end to all self-depreciation and generate a burning desire to recover the lost ground.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Bande Mataram, 1907
India's Rebirth

Love, World, Home, Nature

“The European Union is not, in fact, a union at all, but a continent-wide political coup. What began as a common market has now metamorphosed by stealth into a supranational political dictatorship, a parasitical organism living on the backs of the European nation states, sucking their lifeblood and slowly killing them off; a bureaucratic tyranny that wants to "harmonize" out of existence the national identities that have made Europe a continent of genuine diversity and a cultural crucible whose values have shaped the entire western world. But they want to put a stop to all that in the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and this is why European laws are never enacted in response to any kind of organic need in society, but as top-down directives intended to impose indiscriminate uniformity for its own sake.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Europe needs a revolution" (25 August 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=s3u9LB32YYM 2011

World

“I try to carry out the most precise and discriminative analyses I can in order to show in what ways things change, are transformed, are displaced. When I study the mechanisms of power, I try to study their specificity… I admit neither the notion of a master nor the universality of his law. On the contrary, I set out to grasp the mechanisms of the effective exercise of power; and I do this because those who are inserted in these relations of power, who are implicated therein, may, through their actions, their resistance, and their rebellion, escape them, transform them—in short, no longer submit to them. And if I do not say what ought to be done, it is not because I believe there is nothing to be done. Quite on the contrary, I think there are a thousand things to be done, to be invented, to be forged, by those who, recognizing the relations of power in which they are implicated, have decided to resist or escape them. From this point of view, my entire research rests upon the postulate of an absolute optimism. I do not undertake my analyses to say: look how things are, you are all trapped. I do not say such things except insofar as I consider this to permit some transformation of things. Everything I do, I do in order that it may be of use.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Quand j’étudie les mécanismes de pouvoir, j’essaie d’étudier leur spécificité… Je n’admets ni la notion de maîtrise ni l’universalité de la loi. Au contraire, je m’attache à saisir des mécanismes d’exercise effectif de pouvoir ; et je le fais parce que ceux qui sont insérés dans ces relations de pouvoir, qui y sont impliqués peuvent, dans leurs actions, dans leur résistance et leur rébellion, leur échapper, les transformer, bref, ne plus être soumis. Et si je ne dis pas ce qu’il faut faire, ce n’est pas parce que je crois qu’il n’y a rien à faire. Bien au contraire, je pense qu’il y a mille choses à faire, à inventer, à forger par ceux qui, reconnaissant les relations de pouvoir dans lesquelles ils sont impliqués, ont décidé de leur résister ou de leur échapper. De ce point de vue, toute ma recherche repose sur un postulat d’optimisme absolu. Je n’effectue pas mes analyses pour dire : voilà comment sont les choses, vous êtes piégés. Je ne dis ces choses que dans la mesure où je considère que cela permet de les transformer. Tout ce que je fais, je le fais pour que cela serve.
Dits et Écrits 1954–1988 (1976) Vol. II, 1976–1988 edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, p. 911-912

Way, Exercises, Optimism, Thinking

“There is no question of ever accepting Nazi representatives in the Austrian cabinet. An absolute abyss separates Austria from Nazism. We do not like arbitrary power, we want law to rule our freedom. We reject uniformity and centralization.... Christendom is anchored in our very soil, and we know but one God: and that is not the State, or the Nation, or that elusive thing, Race. Our children are God’s children, not to be abused by the State. We abhor terror; Austria has always been a humanitarian state. As a people, we are tolerant by predisposition. Any change now, in our "status quo", could only be for the worse.”

Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977) Chancellor of Austria

"Morning Telegraph" of London (January 5, 1938), reprinted in "Let the Record Speak", Dorothy Thompson, Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company (1939) p. 135

God, Children, People, Question

“Natural law is not applicable to the unseen world behind the symbols, because it is unadapted to anything except symbols, and its perfection is a perfection of symbolic linkage. You cannot apply such a scheme to the parts of our personality which are not measurable by symbols any more than you can extract the square root of a sonnet.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. V, p.53

World, Nature, Parting, Personality