Quotes about laws
page 39

Richard Pipes photo
Adolphe Quetelet photo

“The great body of population dynamics, like those of the motion of the celestial bodies, can be solved—and what is most remarkable, there is a surprising analogy between the formulas employed in these calculations. I believe that I have achieved to some extent what I have long said about the possibility of founding a social mechanics on the model established by celestial mechanics—to formulate the motions of the social body in accordance with those of celestial bodies, and to find there again the same properties and laws of conservation.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Astronomie élémentaire? (1834) as quoted by Theodore M. Porter, "From Quetelet to Maxwell: Social Statistics and the Origin of Statistical Physics" in The Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences: Some Critical and Historical Perspectives (2013) ed., I. Bernard Cohen

Alan Greenspan photo
Mir-Hossein Mousavi photo
Michele Bachmann photo

“Federal law forms a new governance structure that opposes both free enterprise and representative government…A new national curriculum is used that embraces a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Michael J. Chapman and Senator Michele Bachmann, "How New U.S. Policy Embraces a State-Planned Economy" (2001)
2000s

Pat Condell photo
Koila Nailatikau photo

“For all I know this has come very late in the day and it's a bit too late … Had my father been here, I believe he would have respected and upheld the rule of law.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

7 May 2005
On the government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, 7 May, 2005

Bernard Lewis photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
John Bright photo

“To the Working Men of Rochdale: A deep sympathy with you in your present circumstances induces me to address you. Listen and reflect, even though you may not approve. Your are suffering—you have long suffered. Your wages have for many years declined, and your position has gradually and steadily become worse. Your sufferings have naturally produced discontent, and you have turned eagerly to almost any scheme which gave hope of relief. Many of you know full well that neither an act of Parliament nor the act of a multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade has long been bad, and that with a bad trade wages cannot rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages, you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employment. Trade must yield a profit, or it will not long be carried on…The aristocracy are powerful and determined; and, unhappily, the middle classes are not yet intelligent enough to see the safety of extending political power to the whole people. The working classes can never gain it of themselves. Physical force you wisely repudiate. It is immoral, and you have no arms, and little organisations…Your first step to entire freedom must be commercial freedom—freedom of industry. We must put an end to the partial famine which is destroying trade, and demand for your labor, your wages, your comforts, and your independence. The aristocracy regard the Anti-Corn Law League as their greatest enemy. That which is the greatest enemy of the remorseless aristocracy of Britain must almost of necessity be your firmest friend. Every man who tells you to support the Corn Law is your enemy—every man who hastens, by a single hour, the abolition of the Corn Law, shortens by so much the duration of your sufferings. Whilst the inhuman law exists, your wages must decline. When it is abolished, and not till then, they will rise.”

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

Address (17 August 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp, 81-82.
1840s

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“If there is a God, he has left no tracks in the laws of physics; or if he has, he has covered them up very well.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 6, Pandora's Box, p. 122.

Carl Rowan photo
Arnold Schoenberg photo

“Hauer looks for laws. Good. But he looks for them where he will not find them.”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

"Hauer's Theories" (Notes of 9 May 1923), in Style and Idea (1985), p. 209
1920s

Rudolf Clausius photo
Farah Pahlavi photo
Adam Ferguson photo

“Theory consists in referring particular operations to the principles, or general laws, under which they are comprehended; or in referring particular effects to the causes from which they proceed.”

Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) Scottish philosopher and historian

Introduction, Section IV, Of Theory, p. 7.
Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769)

Rose Wilder Lane photo
Richard Cobden photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Ervin László photo
Elena Ceaușescu photo

“We live in a normal apartment, just like every other citizen. We have ensured an apartment for every citizen through corresponding laws.”

Elena Ceaușescu (1916–1989) Romanian politician

Statements at trial http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_the_closed_trial_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Ceau%C5%9Fescu (25 December 1989)

Leonard Mlodinow photo
Joseph Joubert photo
Josiah Gilbert Holland photo
Philip K. Dick photo
William Howard Taft photo

“We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Source: Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (Columbia University Press, 1916), Chapter 6.

Otto Weininger photo
Priscilla Presley photo

“Yes. I came to Washington to lobby Senators and Congressmen to co-sponsor in support of the PAST Act and I'm hoping by making this public people will join me to help me get this bill passed. Links are available for them to contact their Congressman saying they support the PAST Act. That's all they have to do. You would think this is a no-brainer, that this would pass but there IS opposition. The law was passed in 1970 to stop soring but Horse Industry (HIOs) found loopholes and continued soring. USDA is charged with enforcement of the Horse Protection Act, but as the result of a 1976 amendment to the act, the USDA has for decades certified the horse industry organization to conduct the majority of inspections at horse shows. This self regulation scheme has failed miserably and has to be abolished. USDA inspectors are threatened by exhibitors at horse shows and must be frequently accompanied by security. If they had nothing to hide (like covering the scarred legs with paint or taking off other paraphernalia when USDA inspectors are around) why aren't they welcomed? That's why being their own inspectors is not working.”

Priscilla Presley (1945) actress and businesswoman from the United States and former wife of Elvis Presley

Priscilla Presley On The Cause She's So Passionate About And The First Time Elvis Took Her Breath Away http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pat-gallagher/priscilla-presley_b_4933783.html, 12 March, 2014.

Thomas Aquinas photo
James Comey photo
Hung Hsiu-chu photo
Jo Walton photo

“There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.”

Cf. Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge [The Red Lily] (1894), ch. 7: La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain. (The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.)
Source: Farthing (2006), Chapter 18

Peter Kropotkin photo
Charles Krauthammer photo

“Remember how Democrats were complaining that Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare, it was somehow unpatriotic, because it was an attack on the law of the land. This law of the land doesn’t even exist. It exists in Obama’s head. It’s whatever he thinks. He wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is gonna be.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Fox News Special Report, February 12, 2014 : panel discussion http://www.mediaite.com/tv/krauthammer-obama-now-just-%e2%80%98decides-what-the-law-is-going-to-be%e2%80%99-every-morning/ ; video clip at mediaite.com.
2010s, 2014

Ilana Mercer photo

“Anti-discrimination law is inconsistent with freedom of association and the right of private property.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The right to discriminate is the essence of liberty,” https://jungefreiheit.de/kolumne/2015/das-recht-auf-diskriminierung-ist-die-essenz-der-freiheit/ Junge Freiheit, April 9, 2015.
2010s, 2015

Umberto Boccioni photo
Aldo Leopold photo
Michael Moorcock photo
Buckminster Fuller photo
Jaron Lanier photo

“If anything, there's a reverse Moore's Law observable in software: As processors become faster and memory becomes cheaper, software becomes correspondingly slower and more bloated, using up all available resources.”

Jaron Lanier (1960) American computer scientist, musician, and author

"One Half of a Manifesto," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Michel De Montaigne photo

“I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.”

Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

John Angell James photo
Merrick Garland photo

“For a judge to be worthy of such trust, he or she must be faithful to the Constitution and to the statutes passed by the Congress. He or she must put aside his personal views or preferences, and follow the law -- not make it.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Remarks by the President Announcing Judge Merrick Garland as his Nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick, Garland, w:Merrick Garland, The White House, March 16, 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_by_the_President_Announcing_Judge_Merrick_Garland_as_his_Nominee_to_the_Supreme_Court#Remarks_by_Judge_Garland]; quote then excerpted in:
USA Today, March 18, 2016, March 17, 2016, Obama: Merrick Garland qualified to serve on Supreme Court immediately, Gregory Korte http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/16/obama-supreme-court-nomination/81824982/,; and quote also excerpted in source:
CNN, March 16, 2016, March 18, 2016, Who is Merrick Garland?, Ariane De Vogue and Tami Luhby http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/16/politics/who-is-merrick-garland/index.html?eref=rss_politics,
Remarks by Judge Garland upon nomination to Supreme Court of the United States (2016)

Houston Stewart Chamberlain photo
Sidney Lee photo

“Discriminating brevity is a law of the right biographic method.”

Sidney Lee (1859–1926) English biographer and critic

"Principles of Biography", 1911

George Boole photo

“That axiom of Metaphysicians which is termed the principle of contradiction and which affirms that it is impossible for anything to possess a quality, and in the same time not to possess it, is a consequence of the fundamental law of thought, whose expression is x²=x.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 49: as cited in: " Professor Boole's Mathematical theory http://books.google.com/books?id=tBNLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA62" in: Henry Longueville Manse, Philosophical pamphlets, (1853), p. 6

Carl Menger photo
Eric Holder photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Archibald Cox photo
Freeman Dyson photo

“The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Imagined Worlds (1997)

Rufus Choate photo

“There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had framed.”

Rufus Choate (1799–1859) American politician

Speech before the New England Society (22 December 1843)
Possibly related to :
The Americans equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.
Junius, Letter xxxv (19 December 1769)
It established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.
George Bancroft on Calvinism, in History of the United States (1834), Vol. III, Ch. vi.
Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring
A Church without a bishop, a State without a King
Anonymous poem "The Puritans' Mistake", published by Oliver Ditson (1844).

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“A foundation of our American way of life is our national respect for law.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, Address to the American People on the Situation in Little Rock (1957)

Thomas Jefferson photo

“We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to ensure a long-continued and honest administration of it's powers. 1. They are not qualified to exercise themselves the EXECUTIVE department: but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it. With us therefore they chuse this officer every 4. years. 2. They are not qualified to LEGISLATE. With us therefore they only chuse the legislators. 3. They are not qualified to JUDGE questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of JURIES therefore they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. Butwe all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. It is left therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.”

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

Letter to the Abbé Arnoux (19 July 1787) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0275
1780s

Ayman Odeh photo

“You are weak people, only a country that isn’t normal acts this way. No apartheid law will erase the fact that in this homeland there are two nations.”

Ayman Odeh (1975) Israeli lawyer and member of the Knesset

About the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, as quoted in Opposition warns of ‘apartheid’ as Knesset starts ‘Jewish state bill’ debates https://www.timesofisrael.com/opposition-warns-of-apartheid-as-knesset-starts-jewish-state-bill-debates/ (26 July 2017) by Marissa Newman, The Times of Israel.

Glenn Greenwald photo
John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) photo

“Actual perceptible damage is not indispensable as the foundation of an action; it is sufficient to show the violation of a right, in which case the law will presume damage.”

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

2 Raym. Rep. 938.
Ashby v. White (1703)

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India (4 August 1920)
1920s

Michel De Montaigne photo

“Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Calvin Coolidge photo
James A. Garfield photo
Algis Budrys photo
Antoni Tàpies photo

“After all, our laws only reflect the definitions of the majority. When those ideas change, the laws change.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 11 (p. 174).

John Marshall Harlan II photo
Sam Harris photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Robert Graves photo
Richard Cobden photo
Albert Einstein photo
Gancho Tsenov photo
Sarah Grimké photo
George W. Bush photo

“It is necessary that the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, eternal in their duration, be universal in their application, that being realized in institutions, law and customs, they spread over the surface of the globe and filter down to it's lowest strata. Only then shall the regeneration of man be accomplished.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Os Brâmanes (1866). Quoted by Teotonio R. de Souza in Essays in Goan history (1989), p. 137
Os Brâmanes (1866)

“The messages of the prophets are essentially indictments of Israel for breach of covenant. They preserved some memory of the old traditions, but were not so naive as to think that the literal demands of the old law would be adequate in their own times. There is no condemnation of the stratification of society as such, rather a condemnation of the injustice and extortion which was done by the powerful. To take a specific example, the old law knew as security for a loan only the pledge (Exod. 22:26). In a simple economy, loans were evidently of an amount which would usually be adequately secured by giving to the creditor some property to hold until the loan was repaid. In case of default, the debtor's property simply reverted to the creditor. No other form of security is presupposed in the Covenant Code, and it is specifically forbidden that an Israelite be a "creditor" to one of his fellows. Already in the reign of Saul the situation had changed, Those who gathered about David as outlaws included those who had "creditors" (I Sam. 22:2), and who therefore had to flee. Under the old pledge system of security there would be no possible occasion for flight from the community in case of default. A totally different legal doctrine had come into practice whereby the person of the debtor was security for a loan. Upon default the creditor could seize him (or his family) as a slave, possibly without any legal action at all. The only alternative to slavery would have been flight. This doctrine is identical to that of Babylonian law, and no doubt of the Canaanites as well. It is in the law of the monarchy that Canaanite influence is doubtless to be posited, but it is a legal tradition in total contradiction to the customs and morality of early Israel. Amos protested violently against the way the legal doctrine was practiced, as did most of the prophets (Am. 2:6; Hos. 12:8-9; Mic. 2:1-2). The later lawcodes illustrate beautifully the way in which the early traditions, and the needs of business were brought into harmony. The older pledge system was simply inadequate for a commercial economy; and if the person of the debtor was to be protected, so also must the rights of the creditor to some security for his loan to be guaranteed. Therefore, Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code (Lv. 17-26) accept the doctrine of bodily liability, but place restrictions upon the powers of the creditor over the defaulting debtor. In the Holiness Code he is not to be treated as a slave, nor given the legal status of a slave, but rather to be as a hired laborer.”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Law and Convenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1954)

Jack Kevorkian photo
Berthe Morisot photo
Jesse Ventura photo
John Calvin photo
Ray Comfort photo
Bill Nye photo

“If we continue to eschew science … we are not going to move forward. We will not embrace natural laws. We will not make discoveries. We will not invent and innovate and stay ahead.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, A12, 'Science Guy' Bill Nye defends evolution in debate, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota, February 5, 2014, Dylan Lovan, Associated Press]

Mao Zedong photo
Mike Huckabee photo
Benjamin N. Cardozo photo
Albert Einstein photo

“The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 10

Edward Jenks photo
Bill Nye photo

“Please, you don't want to raise a generation of science students who don't understand how we know our place in the cosmos, who don't understand natural law.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, 3, Sarah Whitman, Age-old feud: In the beginning, Tampa Bay Times, Florida, February 7, 2014]

Kent Hovind photo