Quotes about laws
page 37

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The laws of the media, in tetrad form, bring logos and formal cause up to date to reveal analytically the structure of all human artefacts.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 127

Angela Davis photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“The goal is the developed Kingdom of god, the New Jerusalem, a world order under god's law.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 357

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo

“The practice of the Court forms the law of the Court.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Wilson v. Rastall (1792), 4 T. R. 757.

Charles Kingsley photo
Stephen Miller photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
Murray N. Rothbard photo
Jacob Bekenstein photo
Mel Brooks photo
John Gray photo
Francis Bacon photo
Hans Kelsen photo
Yehuda Ashlag photo
Nanabhoy Palkhivala photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo
John Greenleaf Whittier photo
Eric Holder photo
Amit Shah photo

“But I think [the] Uttar Pradesh electorate was fed up of this caste-based politics as the state has hardly seen any development, [the] [law-and-order] situation has deteriorated, investment, employment, women’s safety, rural and agriculture development, these areas hardly saw any development.”

Amit Shah (1964) Indian politician

"Exclusive Amit Shah Interview: People are waiting to vote for Modi," 2013, "Sunday Interview: We had 450 video raths with GPS and I’d get feedback on my mobile, says Amit Shah", 2014

Earl Warren photo
Edward Coke photo

“The King himself should be under no man, but under God and the Law.”

Edward Coke (1552–1634) English lawyer and judge

Prohibitions del Roy, 12 Co. Rep. 63, quoting Henry de Bracton's treatise on the laws and customs of England. http://www.uniset.ca/other/cs4/77ER1342.html
Institutes of the Laws of England

Manu Chao photo

“Alone I go with my grief
Alone my curse goes
Running is my destiny
To get around the law
Lost in the heart
Of the big Babylon
They call me the clandestine
For not carrying papers

To a northern city
I went to work
I left my life
Between Ceuta and Gibraltar
I am a line in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is forbidden
Says the authority”

Manu Chao (1961) French Spanish singer, guitarist and record producer

Solo voy con mi pena
Sola va mi condena
Correr es mi destino
Para burlar la ley
Perdido en el corazón
De la grande Babylon
Me dicen el clandestino
Por no llevar papel

Pa' una ciudad del norte
Yo me fui a trabajar
Mi vida la dejé
Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar
Soy una raya en el mar
Fantasma en la ciudad
Mi vida va prohibida
Dice la autoridad
Clandestino, song about the undocumented migrants.
Clandestino (1998)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Man seeks, in his manhood,
not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas,
but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness
and faithful in friendship,
making man free.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

Eric Frein photo
Antoine Augustin Cournot photo
William Pitt the Younger photo

“Often it is not physical limitations… but rather it is human made laws, habits, and organizational rules, regulations, personal egos, and inertia, which dominate the evolution of the future.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Ahad Ha'am photo

“We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in our dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do our brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their Diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey [the Ottoman Empire] can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh – when a slave becomes king – Proverbs 30:22]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put an end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revengeful like no other.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Wrestling with Zion, p. 15.

José Maria Eça de Queiroz photo

“Superior forms of thought have a fatal tendency of later becoming revealed law: and all philosophy ends, in its last stages, by becoming religion.”

As formas superiores do pensamento tem uma tendência fatal a tornar-se na futura lei revelada: e toda a filosofia termina, nos seus velhos dias, por ser religião.
"Israelismo"; "Israelism" p. 50.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)

David Lloyd George photo
Marguerite Yourcenar photo

“Any law too often subject to infraction is bad; it is the duty of the legislator to repeal or change it.”

Toute loi trop souvent transgressée est mauvaise: c'est au législateur à l'abroger ou à la changer.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 113

Fali Sam Nariman photo

“No tort is assignable, in law or equity. It is not within any species of action at common law.”

Joseph Yates (judge) (1722–1770) English barrister and judge

4 Burr. Part. IV., 2386.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)

Marco Rubio photo

“The government can't change the weather. I said that in the speech. We can pass a bunch of laws that will destroy our economy, but it isn't going to change the weather. Because, for example, there are other countries that are polluting in the atmosphere much greater than we are at this point, China, India, all these countries that are still growing. They're not going to stop doing what they're doing. America is a country, it's not a planet. So we can pass a bunch of laws or executive orders that will do nothing to change the climate or the weather but will devastate our economy. Devastate it!”

Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician

Fox & Friends, Fox News, , quoted in * 2013-02-13
GOP ‘Savior’ Marco Rubio Mocks Climate Change
Adam
Peck
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/13/1588411/gop-savior-marco-rubio-mocks-climate-change/
Referring to a statement in his State of the Union response, "When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can't control the weather — he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air."
2010s, 2013

Bruce Fein photo

“Hillary Clinton is a clear and present danger to the Constitution, the rule of law, and international peace and security. Her eagerness for war, i. e., legalized murder, to create an image of adolescent toughness makes her a worse fit for the Presidency than would Lady Macbeth.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

Bruce Fein, Hillary Clinton: Unfit for the Presidency, Huffington Post, October 16, 2015 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-fein/hillary-clinton-unfit-for_b_8313372.html

George Henry Lewes photo
Robert Mueller photo
Charles Sanders Peirce photo
Bono photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Maimónides photo
Ambrose photo

“And what else did John have in mind but what is virtuous, so that he could not endure a wicked union even in the king's case, saying: "It is not lawful for thee to have her to wife." He could have been silent, had he not thought it unseemly for himself not to speak the truth for fear of death, or to make the prophetic office yield to the king, or to indulge in flattery. He knew well that he would die as he was against the king, but he preferred virtue to safety. Yet what is more expedient than the suffering which brought glory to the saint.”
Quid autem aliud Ioannes nisi honestatem consideravit? ut inhonestas nuptias etiam in rege non posset perpeti, dicens: Non licet tibi illam uxorem habere. Potuit tacere, nisi indecorum sibi iudicasset mortis metu verum non dicere, inclinare regi propheticam auctoritatem, adulationem subtexere. Sciebat utique moriturum se esse, quia regi adversabatur: sed honestatem saluti praetulit. Et tamen quid utilius quam quod passionis viro sancto advexit gloriam?

Ambrose (339–397) bishop of Milan; one of the four original doctors of the Church

De officiis ministrorum ("On the Offices of Ministers" or, "On the Duties of the Clergy"), Book III, chapter XIV, part 89 as quoted in www.ewtn.com http://www.ewtn.com/library/PATRISTC/PII10-2.HTM

Arthur Scargill photo
Robert LeFevre photo

“If you have a government of good laws and bad men, you will have a bad government. For bad men will not be bound by good laws.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, “Unlimited Government” (Dec. 29, 1961).

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo
Tommy Douglas photo

“It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do. They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats. Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are. Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much physical effort. All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats. Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever. And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat. You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice. Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!"”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

So they put him in jail. But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea!
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Digital+Archives/Politics/Parties+and+Leaders/Tommy+Douglas/ID/1409090169/?sort=MostPopular

Leo Igwe photo
Gunnar Myrdal photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Andrew Marvell photo
Michael Bloomberg photo
John Cheever photo
Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) photo

“There is no iron law here, but there is clearly some tendency for larger-than-necessary coalitions to disintegrate.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) (1944) author, academic, and political activist

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 5, How Many Are Too Many? Size of Coalitions, p. 88.

A.E. Housman photo

“The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Now I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 12, l. 1-4.
Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

Cormac McCarthy photo
Francois Rabelais photo

“Necessity has no law.”

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 15.

William Kingdon Clifford photo
André Maurois photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo

“Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Voltaire http://books.google.com/books?id=bGFBAAAAYAAJ&q="Where+it+is+a+duty+to+worship+the+sun+it+is+pretty+sure+to+be+a+crime+to+examine+the+laws+of+heat"&pg=PA14#v=onepage (1871).

Gustav Radbruch photo
Andrew Dickson White photo

“Every isolated determinate dynamic system, obeying unchanging laws, will ultimately develop some sort of organisms that are adapted to their environments.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Ashby (1962), quoted in: V. Lawrence Parsegian (1972) This cybernetic world of men, machines, and earth systems'. p. 178: About the principle of self-organization

William Moulton Marston photo

“The social value of freeing women from a harem-enclosed existence to a life of activity can be questioned only by those advocates of a "man's world" who wish to perpetuate its butchers and savage jungle law.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

As quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.7 in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,
Attributed

Julius Malema photo

“It didn’t end there [with genocide]. They passed law after law‚ taking land from our people. Yet investors never left the country. When they passed the Land Act of 1913‚ investors never left the country. Investors came into the country.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

On 4 March 2018, at the launch of the EFF's election registration campaign, Standard Bank arena, Johannesburg. As quoted by Nico Gous in Land in SA was taken through ‘genocide’ and will be returned: Malema https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-03-04-land-in-sa-was-taken-through-genocide-and-will-be-returned-malema/, Sunday Times (4 March 2018)

Roger Scruton photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions — divisions which have all lasted too long. Its purpose is national, not regional.”

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

1960s, Civil Rights Bill signing speech (1964)

Paul Klee photo

“[commenting French Cubist art].. Trees are violated, humans become incapable of life; there is a coercion that leads to the un-recognazibility of the object, to a picture-puzzle. For here what counts is not a profane law, but a law of art.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (April 1912); as cited in Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia, Roger Benjamin & Cristina Ashjian; Univ of California Press, 2015, p. 106
In April 1912 Paul Klee spent 16 days with his wife Lily in Paris. They visited the exhibtion of the 'Salon des Independants' of 1912, where works were shown of Delaunay, Seurat and many Cubist works
1911 - 1914

Lysander Spooner photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Heather Brooke photo
Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley photo

“I think that common law is better than equity.”

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley (1828–1921) English judge

Angus v. Clifford (1891), L. J. Rep. (N. S.) 60 C. D. 455.

John Eardley Wilmot photo
Jane Roberts photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Francis Escudero photo

“The Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Justice should immediately and without delay get in touch with their counterparts and demand the attendance of the four witnesses. Such demand is covered by the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which calls not only for Respect for Law but the obligation to make available the US personnel for investigative or judicial proceedings. As worded in Article V, "US military authorities shall, upon formal notification by the Philippine authorities and without delay, make such personnel available to those authorities in time for any investigative or judicial proceedings." The VFA clearly states that the Philippines has criminal jurisdiction over US soldiers involved in a crime in the country, and it is a matter of invoking it with speed and conviction. The VFA, undoubtedly, is one sided and as such we must always insist and be vigilant with what is accorded us as a matter of sovereign right in that treaty. This is incident calls for the Philippine authorities’ and the Filipinos’ righteous indignation to fight for custody of the suspect and demand for the physical availability of the four American witnesses. We cannot just sit idly by and watch while our laws are being subverted. If we cannot defend, protect nor assist our fellow Filipino right here in our own soil, what chilling message do we get out there to our people and especially to those who are outside Philippine soils? We cannot begrudge the US for acting to protect the interests of its nationals and its interests. Our own officials should also, with the same fervor, do the same. This is why I continue my call for the review of the VFA for clearer, stronger and stricter stipulations which are mutually beneficial to both parties in every step of the way.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, December 16). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152798060815610/
2014, Facebook

Paul of Tarsus photo
Anthony Kennedy photo

“We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Quoted in [Richard C. Reuben, Man in the Middle, California Lawyer, October 1992, 35]

Frederick Douglass photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“Eventually technical standards will become as important as laws.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Alan Kay photo

“The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

1984 in Alan Kay's paper Inventing the Future which appears in The AI Business: The Commercial Uses of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Patrick Henry Winston and Karen Prendergast. As quoted by Eugene Wallingford in a post entiteled ALAN KAY'S TALKS AT OOPSLA http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2004-11.html#e2004-11-06T21_03_42.htm on November 06, 2004 9:03 PM at the website of the Computer Science section of the University of Northern Iowa.
1980s

Milton Friedman photo

“I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect, not its intent.”

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

Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 163

François Bernier photo

“In eastern countries, the weak and the injured are without any refuge whatever; and the only law that decides all controversies is the cane and the caprice of a governor.”

François Bernier (1620–1688) French physician and traveller

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668)

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Since we are a Christian country, God above all. This history of a secular state doesn't exist, no. The state is Christian and the minority that is against it can leave. Let's make a country for majority! The minority must bow to the majority. Law must exist to defend the majority! The minority suits itself [to the law] or just disappears.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

At Campina Grande Airport https://theintercept.com/2018/09/25/ideias-nazifascistas-bolsonarismo/ on 8 February 2018. Brazil presidential candidate Bolsonaro's most controversial quotes https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-presidential-candidate-bolsonaros-most-controversial-quotes-012652084.html. Yahoo!, 29 September 2018.

Francis George photo
Calvin Coolidge photo