Quotes about laws (6497 quotes, page 44)

“Even if the doctrine of substantive due process were somehow defensible, it is not, petitioners still would not have a claim. To invoke the protection of the Due Process Clause at all, whether under a theory of 'substantive' or 'procedural' due process, a party must first identify a deprivation of 'life, liberty, or property'. The majority claims these state laws deprive petitioners of 'liberty', but the concept of 'liberty' it conjures up bears no resemblance to any plausible meaning of that word as it is used in the Due Process Clauses.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s

Life

“This law, by and large, extends the same kind of crime-fighting tools we apply to gangs and mobsters to terrorists. That's not something that is an infringement of our civil liberties.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

2004-01-20
State delegation split on speech
Craig
Gilbert
Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=201475
2012-09-30
http://web.archive.org/web/20080116205008/http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=201475
2008-01-16
discussing the USA PATRIOT Act

Fight

“Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Anti-Dühring http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/index.htm (1878)

Nature , Knowledge , Freedom

“Third, these general ideas are not mere words, nor do they consist in this, that certain concrete facts will every time happen under certain descriptions of conditions; but they are just as much, or rather far more, living realities than the feelings themselves out of which they are concreted. And to say that mental phenomenon are governed by law does not mean merely that they are describable by a general formula; but that there is a living idea, a conscious continuum of feeling which pervades them, and to which they are docile.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Feeling , Idea , Reality , Time

“In Proposals which I drew up for the formation of a Scottish Legal History Society [now the Stair Society] I said that it had long been a reproach to Scotland that no adequate history of Scots Law existed, though it would be difficult to imagine a more attractive field of study, for the legal system in Scotland was not only perhaps our most distinctive heritage, but was also of special interest because of its combination in theory and practice of the Roman Law and the Common Law.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 214

Imagination , History , Study

“We can imagine that the Academy, which could be attended only by men of leisure, was a cradle of discontent. The author of the Laws was a disgruntled old man, full of political rancor, fearing and hating the crowd and above all their demagogues; his prejudices had crystallized and he had become an old doctrinaire, unable to see anything but the reflections of his own personality and to hear anything but the echoes of his own thoughts. The worst of it was that he, a noble Athenian, admired the very Spartans who had defeated and humiliated his fatherland. Plato was witnessing a social revolution (even as we are) and he could not bear it at all. His main concern was: how could one stop it.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Source: A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952), Ch.16 "Plato and the Academy" p. 409.

Men , Hate , Fear , Imagination

“I thank the Supreme Court magistrates for affirming the TRO. This confirms that Senator Grace Poe remains a candidate for president and whose name stays on the official ballot, notwithstanding the orchestrated efforts to disqualify her. We hope that the high court will also uphold the laws and long established jurisprudence when it decides on the other petitions in connection with the candidacy of Senator Grace.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2016, January 12). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153807055665610/
2016, Facebook

Hope , Effort

“For a long time now there has been a rising tide of rebellion against this Western paramountcy, and a desire to reassert Muslim values and restore Muslim greatness. The Muslim has suffered successive stages of defeat. The first was his loss of domination in the world, to the advancing power of Russia and the West. The second was the undermining of his authority in his own country, through an invasion of foreign ideas and laws and ways of life and sometimes even foreign rulers or settlers, and the enfranchisement of native non-Muslim elements. The third—the last straw—was the challenge to his mastery in his own house, from emancipated women and rebellious children. It was too much to endure, and the outbreak of rage against these alien, infidel, and incomprehensible forces that had subverted his dominance, disrupted his society, and finally violated the sanctuary of his home was inevitable. It was also natural that this rage should be directed primarily against the millennial enemy and should draw its strength from ancient beliefs and loyalties.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Life , Women , Children , World

“Who can believe that all these mighty works
Have grown, unaided by the hand of God,
From small beginnings? that the law is blind
by which the world was made?”
Quis credat tantas operum sine numine moles Ex minimis, caecoque creatum foedere mundum?

Marcus Manilius Astronomica

Book I, line 492, as reported in Dictionary of Quotations (classical) (1897) by T. B. Harbottle, p. 240.
Astronomica

God , World

“Law is necessary, but in a more functional culture, it would presumably be less necessary than it is now, because people would know what to do.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

Uncommon Knowledge (2005)

People

“And I say to my people's masters: Beware,
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people,
who shall take what ye would not give. Did ye think to conquer the people,
Or that Law is stronger than life and than men's desire to be free?
We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed, tyrants, hypocrites, liars!”

Patrick Pearse The Rebel

"The Rebel"

Life , Men , People , Thinking

“I don't have to be nice to people who are causing great damage to the nation … I refuse to be nice to people who want to overthrow what the military and the security forces have been doing to maintain law and order in this country in the past five years since the illegal overthrow of the Labour Government … I refuse to be nice to people like Jioji Kotobalavu and Qoriniasi Bale. I don't have to be nice to anyone trying to destabilise what the army has built.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

(30 May 2005).
2000, 2005

People , Past , Country

“Legitimation is the process by which a legislator is authorized to promulgate such a law as a norm.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.8

“The laws of the realm do admit nothing against the law of God.”

Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet (1554–1625) English politician

Colt v. Glover (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 149.

God

“The following work is not a republication of a former treatise by the Author, entitled, "The Mathematical Analysis of Logic." Its earlier portion is indeed devoted to the same object, and it begins by establishing the same system of fundamental laws, but its methods are more general, and its range of applications far wider. It exhibits the results, matured by some years of study and reflection, of a principle of investigation relating to the intellectual operations, the previous exposition of which was written within a few weeks after its idea had been conceived.”

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

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. i; Preface, lead paragraph

Mathematics , Idea , Study

“Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.”

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

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Life , Money , Beauty

“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Life-Line

Life-Line (p. 25)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

History , Support , Change , Future

“Profiling is and always will be an arbitrary and unfair tool! No civilized government, much less ours, should use or employ it. No one can and/or should generalize within and among races/religions/genders/ages/social strata. We are all equal before the law!”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (6:02 p.m. 2015 September 22).
2015, Twitter Feed

Age , Religion

“Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God upon which this nation and our laws are predicated.”

Roy Moore (1947) American former judge

D.H. v. H.H. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/al-supreme-court/1303306.html (February 15, 2002), quoted in [2017-09-29, Michelle Goldberg, How Donald Trump Opened the Door to Roy Moore, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/donald-trump-roy-moore.html]

God , Nature

“After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States.”

Curt Flood (1938–1997) baseball player

Letter to Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, December 24, 1969
Cited in, Richard D. Carter, Curt Flood (1971). The Way It Is, Trident Press, ISBN 0-671-27076-1.

Feeling

“I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

World , Thinking

“Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.
Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a "Southern Manifesto" because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice.
Give us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches of the south who will do justly and love mercy, and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.
Give us the ballot, and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court's decision of May seventeenth, 1954.”

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

1950s, Give Us the Ballot (1957)

Love , Men , Books , Justice

“It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of 'laws' to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. v. Browning, 310 U.S. 362, 369 (1940).
Judicial opinions

Life , Books

“Such subjects are the very strength of kings,
And are thus above the law.”

Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) French tragedian

De pareils serviteurs sont les forces des rois,
Et de pareils aussi sont au-dessus des lois.
Tulle, act V, scene iii
King Tullus forgives the hero, Horace, who has saved the state but killed his sister.
Horace (1639)

“People continued — regardless of all that leads man forward — to try to unite the incompatibles : the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), III

Love , Life , Men , People

“Anarchists generally make use if the word "State" to mean all the collection of institutions, political, legislative, judicial, military, financial, etc., by means of which management of their own affairs, the guidance of their personal conduct, and the care of ensuring their own safety are taken from the people and confided to certain individuals, and these, whether by usurpation or delegation, are invested with the right to make laws over and for all, and to constrain the public to respect them, making use of the collective force of the community to this end.”

Errico Malatesta book Anarchy

Anarchy (1891)

People , Confidence , Communication , Personality

“In mind, she was of a strong and vigorous turn, having from her earliest youth devoted herself with uncommon ardour to the study of the law; not wasting her speculations upon its eagle flights, which are rare, but tracing it attentively through all the slippery and eel-like crawlings in which it commonly pursues its way.”

Charles Dickens book The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 33

Youth , Way , Study , Strong

“Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one — except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Common-Law deity. Such a working system for the universe suited a young man who had just helped to waste five or ten thousand million dollars and a million lives, more or less, to enforce unity and uniformity on people who objected to it.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

People , Religion , Universe , Help

“This idea is that laws which purport to be statements of what actually occurs are statistical in character as distinct from so-called dynamic laws that are abstract and mathematical, and disguised definitions. Recognition of the statistical nature of physical laws was first effected in the case of gases when it became evident that generalizations regarding the behavior of swarms of molecules were not descriptions or predictions of the behavior of any individual particle. A single molecule is not and cannot be a gas. It is consequently absurd to suppose that a scientific law is about the elementary constituents of a gas. It is a statement of what happens when a large number of such constituents interact with one another under certain conditions.”

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

Time and Individuality (1940)

Behavior , Mathematics , Idea , Nature

“The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 16: The Stoic
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

Wisdom , Art , Science , Happiness

“Mill, in speaking of Hume's celebrated principle, "that nothing is credible which is contradictory to experience, or at variance with the laws of nature," calls it a very plain and harmless proposition, being, in effect, nothing more than that whatever is contradictory to a complete induction is incredible. Admit the existence of a Deity, and the possibility of a miracle is the natural consequence. No doubt our examination of the evidence which sustains an unusual phenomenon should be most carefully conducted; but we must not measure the credibility or incredibility of an event by the narrow sphere of our own experience, nor forget that there is a Divine energy which overrides what we familiarly call the laws of nature.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix, p. 488
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

Nature , Forgetting

“Unless we act anew, with dispatch and resolution, we shall sanction a sad and sorrowful course for the future. For if the Fifteenth Amendment is successfully flouted today, tomorrow the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment-the Sixth, the Eighth, indeed, all the provisions of the Constitution on which our system stands — will be subject to disregard and erosion. Our essential strength as a society governed by the rule of law will be crippled and corrupted and the unity of our system hollowed out and left meaningless.”

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

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Sadness , Future

“The common law, though not to be found in the written records of the realm, yet has been long well known. It is coeval with civilised society itself, and was formed from time to time by the wisdom of man. Good sense did not come with the Conquest, or at any other one time, but grew and increased from time to time with the wisdom of mankind.”

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

Rex v. Rusby (1800), Peake's N. P. Cases, 193.

Wisdom , Sense , Time

“Today's looting and acts of violence in Baltimore will not be tolerated. In response, I have put the Maryland National Guard on alert so they can be in position to deploy rapidly as needed. I strongly condemn the actions of the offenders who are engaged in direct attacks against innocent civilians, businesses and law enforcement officers. There is a significant difference between protesting and violence and those committing these acts will be prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law.My thoughts and prayers go out to the men and women in uniform who are actively working to stem this violence and several who been injured in the line of duty. These malicious attacks against law enforcement and local communities only betray the cause of peaceful citizens seeking answers and justice following the death of Freddie Gray.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Statement From Governor Larry Hogan On Violence In Baltimore City http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/04/27/statement-from-governor-larry-hogan-on-violence-in-baltimore-city/" (27 April 2015).

Death , Women , Men , Peace

“It is not to the force or validity of the argument that I object, but to the misinterpretation of its scope. It is a clinching dialectical thumbscrew for the torture of agnostics; yes, with reference to them and their very lawful stadium of thinking, it is even a step of value in the struggle of the soul toward a conviction of its really infinite powers and prospects; but I cannot see in it any full proof of the real being of God. Strictly construed, it is, as I have just endeavoured to show, simply the vindication of that active sovereign judgment which is the light of every mind, which organises even the most elementary perceptions, and which goes on in its ceaseless critical work of reorganisation after reorganisation, building all the successive stages of science, and finally mastering those ultimate implications of science that constitute the insights of philosophy.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.111

God , Soul , Thinking , Light

“Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

“Intelligent creatures [that] evolved to live deep within the atmosphere of a gas giant planet could be deluded, for eons, into thinking that the Universe is an approximately homogeneous expanse of gas, filling a three-dimensional space, but featuring anisotropic laws of motion (which we would ascribe to the planet’s gravitational field). Are we human scientists comparably blinkered?”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

p, 125
"Multiversality" (2013)

Intelligence , Thinking , Universe

“These are the strategic dialectics of anti-imperialist struggle: through the defensive reactions of the system, the escalation of counterrevolution, the transformation of the political martial law into military martial law, the enemy betrays himself, becomes visible.”

Ulrike Meinhof (1934–1976) German left-wing militant

Published in "Minor Literature: Case Study: the Red Army Faction" http://www.simonosullivan.net/articles/red-army-faction.pdf

“He’d caused the First Native War on Mars, by taking advantage of the fact that at that time human law had not defined the killing of Martians as murder.”

Murray Leinster (1896–1975) Novelist, short story writer

The Aliens, p. 92 (originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1957).
Short fiction, Anthropological Note (1957)

War , Time

“Mary Parker Follett was a prominent business philosopher of the period, who agreed with Sheldon about the need to emphasize human factors in management, but placing greater stress on the need to develop a science of cooperation. According to Follett, what she called her 'Law of the Situation' could be a means for bridging the gap between an ideal of scientific management and the unilateral position that it seemed to involve in practice. In effect she was proposing the same collaboration between leaders and subordinates that was usually to be found between leaders of the same rank.”

Henry C. Metcalf (1867–1942) American business theorist

Book abstract
Dynamic administration, 1942

Business , Science

“By the oath I have taken "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," duty directs — and strong personal conviction impels — that I advise the Congress that action is necessary, and necessary now, if the Constitution is to be upheld and the rights of all citizens are not to be mocked, abused and denied. I must regretfully report to the Congress the following facts:
1. That the Fifteenth Amendment of our Constitution is today being systematically and willfully circumvented in certain State and local jurisdictions of our Nation.
2. That representatives of such State and local governments acting "under the color of law," are denying American citizens the right to vote on the sole basis of race or color.
3. That, as a result of these practices, in some areas of our country today no significant number of American citizens of the Negro race can be registered to vote except upon the intervention and order of a Federal Court.
4. That the remedies available under law to citizens thus denied their Constitutional rights — and the authority presently available to the Federal Government to act in their behalf — are clearly inadequate.
5. That the denial of these rights and the frustration of efforts to obtain meaningful relief from such denial without undue delay is contributing to the creation of conditions which are both inimical to our domestic order and tranquillity and incompatible with the standards of equal justice and individual dignity on which our society stands.
I am, therefore, calling upon the Congress to discharge the duty authorized in Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment "to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation."”

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

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Justice , Color , Effort , Strong

“Success in the sociologists' aim might lead, in T. S. Eliot's phrase, to "systems so perfect that no one would need to be good." This view forgets that men long ago committed themselves to the endeavor to control their own collective behavior, not only in the ways sanctioned by the churches but in others, by making it to men's interest to do good. And they have increasingly based the endeavor on an understanding of natural laws of human behavior, those of economics, for example. So that the question is not: Shall this kind of control be undertaken? but: Where shall it stop? A sociologist might also argue that his religious critics have more faith in him than in their own doctrine, the doctrine that man is infinitely tough and resourceful and is not easily cheated of his freedom to sin. What God has given no man can take away, certainly no sociologist. More seriously, he might argue that the social sciences are not in train to eliminate morality but to make greater demands of it. A sociology that shows us unsuspected or not hitherto understood ways in which men are bound up with one another invites more refined answers to the question: "Am I my brother's keeper?"”

George C. Homans (1910–1989) American sociologist

George C. Homans (1956), "Giving a dog a bad name." in: The Listener, Vol. 56. p. 233; Reprinted in: George C. Homans (1962), Sentiments & activities; essays in social science https://archive.org/details/sentimentsactivi00homa, p. 117-8

Men , God , Faith , Way

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last… A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Essay in the American Daily Advertiser (28 August 1794)

“Ethic- is especially important while conducting business, in law suits and trials, when people act rudely, etc.”

Mohammed Alkobaisi (1970) Iraqi Islamic scholar

Understanding Islam, "Morals and Ethics" http://vod.dmi.ae/media/96716/Ep_03_Morals_and_Ethics Dubai Media

People , Business

“I was, of course, angry and disappointed to see this happen, and I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in India in the present, and steadily worsening, political climate… I do not blame Penguin Books, India. Other publishers have just quietly withdrawn other books without making the effort that Penguin made to save this book [The Hindus: An Alternative History]. Penguin, India, took this book on knowing that it would stir anger in the Hindutva ranks, and they defended it in the courts for four years, both as a civil and as a w:Lawsuitcriminal suit. They were finally defeated by the true villain of this piece – the Indian law that makes it a criminal rather than civil offense to publish a book that offends any Hindu, a law that jeopardizes the physical safety of any publisher, no matter how ludicrous the accusation brought against a book.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Wendy Doniger, In: India: PEN protests withdrawal of best-selling book http://fleursdumal.nl/mag/category/news-events/page/12, Fleursdumal.org
Her book [The Hindus: An Alternative History] became controversial and Dinanath Batra of Shiksha Bachao Andolan filed a case against the publisher, claiming that the book was offensive to Hindus and therefore in violation of Section 295A of the Indian penal code which prohibits ‘deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.'

Books , Disappointment , History , Effort

“For commitment theorists, political and economic ideologies that obey transcendent behavioral laws do for people pretty much what religious belief in the supernatural is supposed to do. One frequently cited example of religious-like ideology is Lenin's doctrine of dialectical materialism. An equally plausible candidate is what financier George Soros calls "market fundamentalism." Like more familiar religious doctrines, these promissory ideologies seem to maintain the faith no matter how many contrary facts or reasons they face. But if such secular ideologies perform the same functions as religious ideologies, then why did at least 50 percent of Marx-fearing Russians feel the need to preserve their belief in the supernatural (survey by Subbotsky 2000)? And why is the overwhelming majority of market believers also God-fearing (Novak 1999; Podhoretz 1999). What is it about belief in the supernatural that thwarts social defection and deception, underpinning moral orders as no secular ideology seems able to do for long?”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 14
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

God , People , Fear , Faith

“Our constitution, in short, is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.”

A. V. Dicey (1835–1922) British jurist and constitutional theorist

Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution [Eighth Edition, 1915] (LibertyClassics, 1982), p. 116.

“Now, as discord is allowable, and even necessarily opposed to concord, why may not noise, or a seeming jargon, be opposed to fixed sounds and harmonical proportion? Some of the discords in modern music, unknown till this century, are what the ear can but just bear, but have a very good effect as to contrast. The severe laws of preparing and resolving discord, may be too much adhered to for great effect; I am convinced that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it.”

Charles Burney (1726–1814) English music historian

The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771) pp. 152-3

Music , Strong

“The physicist who states a law of nature with the aid of a mathematical formula is abstracting a real feature of a real material world, even if he has to speak of numbers, vectors, tensors, state-functions, or whatever to make the abstraction.”

Hilary Putnam (1926–2016) American philosopher

in What is Mathematics, in [Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, matter, and method, Cambridge University Press, 1979, 0521295505, 60]

World , Mathematics , Nature

“The word is clear only to the kind who on peak or plain, from dark northern ice-fields to the hot wet jungles, through all wine and want, through lies and unfamiliar truth, dark or light, are governed by the unknown gods, and though each man knows the law, no man may give tongue to it.”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

"The Clan of No Name" (1899); published in the anthology Wounds in the Rain (1900)

God , Truth , Light , Wine

“An hiatus in government is so detested and abhorred, that the law says, "the King never dies," that there may never be a "cesser" of regal functions for a moment.”

John Eardley Wilmot (1709–1792) English judge

Case of John Wilkes (1763), 19 How. St. Tr. 1130.

“Our problem today – not only in Iraq, but in all Arab and Islamic countries – is the duality of the Shari'a and the law…. Our countries do not fully abide by the Shari'a of Allah, nor do they follow a man-made law, like in France and other countries – including Turkey. There is nothing wrong with a country that bases itself exclusively on Shari'a law, with no regard for the civil law. We believe the Koran to be the book sent by Allah – a complete book, with no additions and no omissions. Indeed, we believe that the Koran and Islam are the solution. Why, then, do we mix elements of the French and other laws in our Shari'a law? Let the brothers who demand the establishment of a religious state adhere exclusively to Shari'a law. Let them, for example, collect the Jizya([9, 29, y] poll tax from their Christian citizens. Let them annihilate the Yazidis because they do not belong to the People of the Book. Let them raise doubts about the status of the Sabaeans in Iraq, because it is unclear whether they belong to the People of the Book or not.”

Iyad Jamal Al-Din (1961) Iraqi politician

Note he is speaking sarcastically when he says "There is nothing wrong with a country that bases itself exclusively on shari'a, with no regard for the civil law" and again when he says "Let them, for example, collect the jizya from their Christian citizens. Let them annihilate the Yazidis … Let them raise doubts about the status of the Sabaeans ..."
Iraqi MP Iyad Jamal Al-Din Criticizes the Concept of an Islamic State and Says Iraqis Should Be Grateful to the US for Liberating Iraq, MEMRI, December 14, 2007 http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1641.htm,

People , Books , Problem , Country

“Newton supposed that all matter attracted other matter inversely according to the square of the distance; and the hypothesis was found to account for the whole movements of the heavenly bodies; which all became verifications of what Newton supposed to be the law of the solar system. Adopt the hypothesis that Jesus was what He is represented, and the whole of the books and the history becomes a verification.”

James McCosh (1811–1894) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 58.

Books , History

“Moses is the keystone to every man's ethical code. He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Los Angeles Times interview (1956)

History , Sense

“This is a reality that our investigators repeatedly encountered in their interviews of police and city officials, their conversations with local residents, and their review of thousands of pages of records and documents. This evidence pointed to an unfortunate and unsustainable situation that has not only severely damaged relationships between law enforcement and members of the community, but made professional policing vastly more difficult – and unnecessarily placed officers at increased risk. And today – now that our investigation has reached its conclusion – it is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action. Let me be clear: the United States Department of Justice reserves all its rights and abilities to force compliance and implement basic change.”

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

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Justice , Communication , Reality , Change

“If to state this case is not to decide it, the law has departed further from the meaning of language than is appropriate for a government that is supposed to rule (and to be restrained) through the written word.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275 (1998) (Scalia, dissenting).
1990s

“Laws are for nothing if there is no mechanism to implement them.”

Željko Glasnović (1954) Croatian politician

appeal in Croatian Parliament, 27 September 2017, qouted in HINA/Jutarnji.hr. ŽELJKO GLASNOVIĆ U SABORU NIJE BIRAO RIJEČI 'Strijeljao bih jednog suca, ali nažalost, ne možemo. Još nemamo takvu državu https://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/zeljko-glasnovic-u-saboru-nije-birao-rijeci-strijeljao-bih-jednog-suca-ali-nazalost-ne-mozemo-jos-nemamo-takvu-drzavu/6575319/ Jutarnji list, 2017-09-22. Retrived 2018-02-10.
Qoutes

“I shook my head ruefully. Police departments all over the world were identical in two respects: they all have a fondness for breaking your head open for little or no provocation, and they can’t see the simple truth if it’s lying in front of them naked with its legs spread. The police don’t enforce laws; they don’t even get busy until after the laws are broken. They solve crimes at a pitifully low rate of success. What the police are, to be honest, is a kind of secretarial pool that records the names of the victims and the statements of the witnesses. After enough time passes, they can safely shove this information to the back of the filing system to make room for more.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 17 (pp. 235-236).

Truth , World , Lying , Business

“There are no good laws but such as repeal other laws.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Statement (1835), as quoted in Andrew Johnson, Plebeian and Patriot (1928) by Robert Watson Winston.
Quote

“There are many things in life more worth while than money. One of these things is to be brought up in this our England, which is still "the envy of less happier lands". I do not believe it is for the benefit of children to be uprooted from England and transported to another country simply to avoid tax… Many a child has been ruined by being given too much. The avoidance of tax may be lawful, but it is not yet a virtue.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Re Weston's Settlements, [1969] 1 Ch 223.
Judgments

Life , Money , Children , Envy

“In the Civil Rights Act of 1965, we affirmed through law for every citizen in this land the most basic right of democracy—the right of a citizen to vote in an election in his country. In the five States where the Act had its greater impact, Negro voter registration has already more than doubled.”

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

1960s, Remarks on the Civil Rights Act (1968)

Democracy , Country

“According to our investigation, this emphasis on revenue generation through policing has fostered unconstitutional practices – or practices that contribute to constitutional violations – at nearly every level of Ferguson’s law enforcement system. Ferguson police officers issued nearly 50 percent more citations in the last year than they did in 2010 – an increase that has not been driven, or even accompanied, by a rise in crime.”

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

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

“In the department of physical optics, the phenomena of halos and parhelia have been explained, upon principles not entirely new, but long forgotten: the functions of the eye have been minutely examined, and the mode of its accommodation to the perception of objects at different distances ascertained: the various phenomena of coloured light have been copiously described, and accurately represented by coloured plates; and some new cases of the production of colours have been pointed out, and have been referred to the general law of double lights, by which a great variety of the experiments of former opticians have also been explained; and this law has been applied to the establishment of a theory of the nature of light, which satisfactorily removes almost every difficulty that has hitherto attended the subject.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

Nature , Light

“When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had determined himself, roll down an inclined plain, or Torricelli made the air carry a weight, which he had previously determined to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or when, in later times, Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime again into metals, by withdrawing and restoring something, a new light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her questions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it were in leading strings, because otherwise accidental observations made on no previously fixed plan, will never converge towards a necessary law, which is the only thing that reason seeks and requires. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which concordant phenomena alone can be admitted as laws of nature, and in the other hand the experiment, which it has devised according to those principles, must approach nature, in order to be taught by it: but not in the character of a pupil, who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself proposes. Therefore even the science of physics entirely owes the beneficial revolution in its character to the happy thought, that we ought to seek in nature (and not import into it by means of fiction) whatever reason must learn from nature, and could not know by itself, and that we must do this in accordance with what reason itself has originally placed into nature. Thus only has the study of nature entered on the secure method of a science, after having for many centuries done nothing but grope in the dark.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

Preface to 2nd edition, Tr. F. Max Müller (1905)
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Question , Nature , Study , Light

“The average Christian confuses the Law of Rebirth with what he calls "the transmigration of souls", and frequently believes that the Law of Rebirth signifies the passing of human beings into the bodies of animals or of lower forms of life. Such is by no means the case.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), p. 324

Life , Soul , Animals

“I also am concerned about judges who imagine they see everything in society addressed in the Constitution. It is worth remembering that the Constitution is a very brief document. It defines the structure and authority of the federal government and protects a limited list of sacred rights. It does not, and was never intended to, address every legal issue that might arise in our nation’s history. Democracy is well-served when the Court says, in effect, "the Constitution simply does not comment on this issue." In contrast, constitutionalizing an issue takes it out of the democratic process. If the people disagree with a court decision based on the law, they have a remedy in the political process. Through their elected representatives, they can change the law. But once a court declares a law to be unconstitutional or prohibits some agency action on constitutional grounds, it is limiting the options of the people. Such a step should be taken only where it is clear that the Constitution has truly spoken on the issue and forbidden what the political branches have determined to do.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech to American Enterprise Institute (January 17, 2007)

People , Democracy , Imagination , History

“Those skilled in mathematical analysis know that its object is not simply to calculate numbers, but that it is also employed to find the relations between magnitudes which cannot be expressed in numbers and between functions whose law is not capable of algebraic expression.”

Antoine Augustin Cournot Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth

Source: Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth, 1897, p. 3 ; Cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/198/mode/2up, (1914) p. 33: About the nature of mathematics

Mathematics

“I worked to live and to make a living for my own; as long as neither myself nor my own suffered too much, I remained that which you call honest. Then work got scarce and with unemployment came hunger. It was then that that great law of nature, that imperious voice that allows no retort: the instinct of survival, pushed me to commit some of the crimes and offences that you accuse me of and that I recognise being the author of.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

J'ai travaillé pour vivre et faire vivre les miens ; tant que ni moi ni les miens n'avons trop souffert, je suis resté ce que vous appelez honnête. Puis le travail a manqué, et avec le chômage est venue la faim. C'est alors que cette grande loi de la nature, cette voix impérieuse qui n'admet pas de réplique : l'instinct de la conservation, me poussa à commettre certains des crimes et délits que vous me reprochez et dont je reconnais être l'auteur.
Trial statement

Hunger , Nature , Suffering

“What the anthropic principle depends upon is the idea that whatever is the nature of the universe, or universe portion that we see about us, being subject to whatever dynamical laws govern its actions, this must be strongly favourable to our very existence.”

Roger Penrose book Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe

Source: Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (2016), Ch. 3, Fantasy, p. 311

Idea , Nature , Universe , Dependency

“No stops are ever inserted in Acts of Parliament, or in deeds; but the Courts of law, in construing them, must read them with such stops as will give effect to the whole.”

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

Doe d. Willis and others v. Martin and others (1790), 4 T. R. 65.

Reading

“Conflict in free states is the law of life.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 118, 1865, p. 198
1860s

Life

“The law has armed the High Court of Justice with the power, and imposed on it the duty of preventing brevi manu and by summary proceedings any attempt to interfere with the administration of justice. It is on that ground, and not on any exaggerated notion of the dignity of individuals that insults to Judges are not allowed.”

Charles Bowen (1835–1894) English judge

In re Johnson (1887), L. R. 20 Q. B. D. 74.

Justice

“Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 110.

“The law against witches does not prove there be any; but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

Witches.
Table Talk (1689)

Men , People

“I must give some attention to the delicate question of religion, on which I have touched already. In my father's generation this question still was discussed with passion. Since then a sort of truce has existed in the countries of the West, while in the communist states of the East atheism has been made into the State religion. It is not advisable to blow on the embers of such controversies. But as I am talking about the limitations of our physical world picture I cannot but say that I do not believe in transgressions of the laws of nature. As these laws are of a statistical nature, and therefore allow deviations from the norm, I must define more clearly what I mean. The statistical deviations themselves obey certain laws. The miraculous events of religious tradition, however, are of a different kind, they lie on a different plane altogether; they are meant to prove something lying entirely beyond scientific consideration, such as the power of prayer, the intervention of divine power for or against certain men or nations.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

Men , Lie , World , Religion

“The only sure mode of acquiring sound ideas of our relation to the Creator is to begin with the study of ourselves, and to view God as a Father and Friend, dealing with us in precisely the same way as we would deal with others over whom we exercise authority. Conscience, that infallible Mentor "that sticketh closer than a brother," tells us that we are responsible beings; and in the domestic, as well as the social circle, we speedily feel the discipline and learn the lesson of rewards and punishments. The law written in man's heart points to the past as pregnant with events which may affect the future; and in the earnestness of his aspirations, and the activity of his search, he is gradually led to the mysterious history of his race. He learns that on tables of stone have been engraven the same law to which his heart responded; -that when all were dead, one died for all; and in the contemplation of the great sacrifice, he obtains a solution of the interesting problem of his individual destiny. The Sacred record which is now his guide, speaks to him of fore-knowledge and predestination, while, in perfect consistency, it records the ministration of descending spirits, and the holier communings of God with man. The Divine decrees no longer perplex him. They transcend, indeed, his Reason - but that Reason, the faithful interpreter of Conscience, does not falter in proclaiming the Freedom of his Will, and the Responsibility of his Actions.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Review of Vestiges (1845)

God , Faith , Way , Feeling

“It is difficult to struggle with the common law.”

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818) Lord Chief Justice of England

Kerr v. Willan (1817), 2 Starkie, 54.

“In theory, there were no legal limits to the monarch’s power over his realm. In practice, however, the king was bound by the laws and customs of the land, and exercising his authority depended on the agreement of France’s elite: the nobility and the clergy.”

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski (1971) Historian

The French Revolution (Nelson Modern History) p. 17 (Melbourne, 2016)

Exercises , Dependency

“Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 442

Life , Men , Strong

“For a long time one school of players favored the technique of stating side by side, developing in counterpoint, and finally harmoniously combining two hostile themes or ideas, such as law and freedom, individual and community. In such a Game the goal was to develop both themes or theses with complete equality and impartiality, to evolve out of thesis and antithesis the purest possible synthesis. In general, aside from certain brilliant exceptions, Games with discordant, negative, or skeptical conclusions were unpopular and at times actually forbidden. This followed directly from the meaning the Game had acquired at its height for the players. It represented an elite, symbolic form of seeking for perfection, a sublime alchemy, an approach to that Mind which beyond all images and multiplicities is one within itself — in other words, to God. Pious thinkers of earlier times had represented the life of creatures, say, as a mode of motion toward God, and had considered that the variety of the phenomenal world reached perfection and ultimate cognition only in the divine Unity. Similarly, the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality. ”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Life , God , Hostility , World

“Developing a culture of peace requires education for peace. Everyone — not only children — should be educated in compromise, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, compassion, restoration, mediation and reconciliation.6 Negotiation skills must be taught so as to prevent breaches of the peace and other forms of violence as well as to ensure a peaceful continuation of life after conflict. A philosophical paradigm change is necessary to break out of the prevailing culture of violence, the logic of power, practices of economic exploitation, cultural imperialism and impunity. A road map to this culture of peace entails a strategy to identify and remove obstacles, among which are the arms race, unilateralism and the tendency to apply international law à la carte.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013

Life , Children , Education , Peace

“Never forget that if you leave your law to judges and your religion to bishops, you will presently find yourself without either law or religion.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface
1900s, Getting Married (1908)

Religion , Forgetting

“Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law — not the rule of force — governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Twenty Year Vision for America (2004)

People , World , Fear , Peace

“On the receipt of this letter, Hijaj obtained the consent of Wuleed, the son of Abdool Mullik, to invade India, for the purpose of propagating the faith and at the same time deputed a chief of the name of Budmeen, with three hundred cavalry, to join Haroon in Mikran, who was directed to reinforce the party with one thousand good soldiers more to attack Deebul. Budmeen failed in his expedition, and lost his life in the first action. Hijaj, not deterred by this defeat, resolved to follow up the enterprise by another. In consequence, in the year AH 93 (AD 711) he deputed his cousin and son-in-law, Imad-ood-Deen Mahomed Kasim, the son of Akil Shukhfy, then only seventeen years of age, with six thousand soldiers, chiefly Assyrians, with the necessary implements for taking forts, to attack Deebul…“On reaching this place, he made preparations to besiege it, but the approach was covered by a fortified temple, surrounded by strong wall, built of hewn stone and mortar, one hundred and twenty feet in height. After some time a bramin, belonging to the temple, being taken, and brought before Kasim, stated, that four thousand Rajpoots defended the place, in which were from two to three thousand bramins, with shorn heads, and that all his efforts would be vain; for the standard of the temple was sacred; and while it remained entire no profane foot dared to step beyond the threshold of the holy edifice. Mahomed Kasim having caused the catapults to be directed against the magic flag-staff, succeeded, on the third discharge, in striking the standard, and broke it down… Mahomed Kasim levelled the temple and its walls with the ground and circumcised the brahmins. The infidels highly resented this treatment, by invectives against him and the true faith. On which Mahomed Kasim caused every brahmin, from the age of seventeen and upwards, to be put to death; the young women and children of both sexes were retained in bondage and the old women being released, were permitted to go whithersoever they chose.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Muhammad bin Qãsim (AD 712-715)Debal (Sindh)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Life , Death , Women , Children

“My difficulty with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one. I do not believe – and no one believed for 200 years – that the Constitution contains a right to abortion. And if a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would and could in good conscience vote against an attempt to invalidate that law, for the same reason that I vote against invalidation of laws that contradict Roe v. Wade; namely, simply because the Constitution gives the federal government and, hence, me no power over the matter.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Call for Reckoning http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resources/transcript3.php3 - Pew Forum conference (25 January 2002). N.b. this speech was later modified into an article - God's Justice and Ours http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/gods-justice-and-ours-32 which repeats much the same points.
2000s

“Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people and I put into your hands part of the earth itself as a sign that this land will be the possession of you and your children forever.”

Gough Whitlam (1916–2014) Australian politician, 21st Prime Minister of Australia

Gurindji Land Ceremony Speech http://www.abc.net.au/rural/telegraph/speeches/whitlam.htm, 16 August 1975

Children , People , Parting

“Bohr's investigation had typified what had become a standard procedure in problems of theoretical physics. The first step was to discover the mathematical laws governing certain groups of phenomena; the second was to devise hypothetical models or pictures to interpret these laws in terms of motion or mechanism; the third was to examine in what way these models would behave in other respects, and this would lead to prediction of other phenomena-predictions which might or might not be confirmed when put to the test of experiment. For instance, Newton had explained the phenomena of gravitation in terms of a force of gravitation; a later age had seen the luminiferous ether introduced to explain the propagation of light and, subsequently, the general phenomena of electricity and magnetism; finally Bohr had introduced electronic jumps in an attempt to explain atomic spectra. In each case the models had fulfilled their primary purpose, but had failed to predict further phenomena with accuracy.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Age , Way , Mathematics , Problem

“Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world!”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

1870s

God , World , Hope , Imagination

“The Founders considered the whole foundation of a just society to be structured on the basis of God's revealed law. These laws constituted a moral code clearly distinguishing right from wrong. This concept was not new with the Founders. This was the entire foundation of all religious cultures world-wide.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

God , World

“Having discovered the true principle, I then derived all the laws that govern the motion of light, those concerning its direct propagation, its reflection and its refraction. I reserve for particular members of our Assembly the geometrical demonstration of my theory.
I know the distaste that many mathematicians have for final causes applied to physics, a distaste that I share up to some point. I admit, it is risky to introduce such elements; their use is dangerous, as shown by the errors made by Fermat and Leibniz in following them. Nevertheless, it is perhaps not the principle that is dangerous, but rather the hastiness in taking as a basic principle that which is merely a consequence of a basic principle.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

Error , Light

“Poverty of body in itself mattered nothing; what Francis wanted was poverty of pride, and the external robe or the bare feet were outward and necessary forms of protection against its outward display. Against riches or against all external and visible vanity, rules and laws could be easily enforced if it were worth while, although the purest humility would be reached only by those who were indifferent and unconscious of their external dress; but against spiritual pride the soul is defenceless, and of all its forms the subtlest and the meanest is pride of intellect. […] Lord Bacon held much the same opinion. [..:] "Let men please themselves as they will in admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain:— that, as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind … cannot be trusted …"”

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

Bacon's first object was the same as that of Francis, to humiliate and if possible destroy the pride of human reason; both of them knew that this was their most difficult task.
The Bacon quote is from the Preface to The Great Instauration (1620).
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Men , Soul , Indifference

“The law of plentitude is most accurately rendered thus: In a network, the more opportunities that are taken, the faster new opportunities arise.”

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)

“According to Muslim cannon Law the world is divided into two camps, Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war). A country is Dar-ul-Islam when it is ruled by Muslims. A country is Dar-ul-Harb when Muslims only reside in it but are not rulers of it. That being the Cannon Law of the Muslims, India cannot be the common motherland of the Hindus and the Musalmans-but it cannot be the land of the ‘ Hindus and Musalmans living as equals’. Further, it can be the land of the Musalmans only when it is governed by the Muslims. The moment the land become subject to the authority of a non-Muslims power, it ceases to be the land of the Muslims. Instead of being Dar-ul-Islam it becomes Dar-ul-Harb.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

294
Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

War , World , Country

“Scientifically speaking, an overweight person is more attractive than a skinny one. Newton's Law of Gravitation.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/wordsmithorg/posts/10157765608546840

Personality

“.. art and life are no longer separate domains… The word 'art' no longer has anything to say to us. In place of that, we [=De Stijl-artists ] insist upon the construction of our surroundings according to creative laws, deriving from a fixed principle.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

quote of 1918
quoted in Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 85
1912 – 1919

Life , Art , Quotes

“The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 9: "Nsara", § 5
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

World , Mathematics

“Even if mankind had any desire to rid itself of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed had been assured of a place in our hearts by virtue of time. By writing it down on a piece of paper and parading it as law and belief, Greed could be resurrected at a moment's notice.
That was the beauty of the written word. It was invariably taken at face value and granted permit to be spoken as the truth. It lived longer than the man.
And wreaked havoc in the process.”

Stel Pavlou book Decipher

Decipher, The First Time, p. 7 (2001).

Truth , Beauty , Time , Heart

“The freedom of peoples depends fundamentally on the rule of law, a fair legal system. The place to have trials or accusations is a court of law, the Common Law that has come right up from Magna Carta, which has come right up through the British courts – a court of law is the place where you deal with these matters. If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Criticising the Thames Television programme "Death on the Rock", in an interview with Hatsuhisa Takashima of NHK Japanese television (29 April 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107058
Third term as Prime Minister

People , Freedom , Dependency

“…either the Universe was One, or it was two, or it was many; either Energy was one, seen only in powers of itself, or it was several; either God was Harmony or he was discord. With practical unanimity, mankind rejected the dual or multiple scheme; it insisted on Unity. Thomas took the question as it was given him. The Unity was full of defects; he did not deny them; but he claimed that they might be incidents, and that the admitted Unity might even prove their beneficence. Granting this enormous concession, he still needed a means of bringing into the system one element which vehemently refused to be brought:— that is, Man himself, who insisted that the Universe was a unit, but that he was a universe; that Energy was one, but that he was another energy; that God was omnipotent but that man was free. The contradiction had always existed, exists still, and always must exist, unless man either admits that he is a machine, or agrees that anarchy and chaos are the habit of nature, and law and order its acident. The agreement may become possible, but it was not possible in the thirteenth century nor is it now.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

God , Question , Nature , Universe

“I’ve worked across the aisle to pass laws and treaties and to launch new programs that help millions of people. And if you give me the chance, that’s what I’ll do as President.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

People , Chance , Help

Quotes about laws page 44

Quotes about laws
page 44