Quotes about laws
page 52

“You know what you can buy at the supermarket?” Laws inquired acidly. “I’ll tell you. Canned burnt offerings.”
“You know what you can buy at the hardware store?” Hamilton answered. “Scales to weigh your soul on.”
“That’s silly,” the blond said petulantly. “A soul doesn’t have any weight.”
“Then,” Hamilton reflected, “you could put one through the U. S. mail for nothing.”
“How many souls,” Laws conjectured ironically, “can be fitted into one stamped envelope? New religious question. Split mankind in half. Warring factions. Blood running in the gutters.”
“Ten,” Hamilton guessed.
“Fourteen,” Laws contradicted.
“Heretic. Baby-murdering monster.”
“Bestial drinker of unpurified blood.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

“Accursed spawn of filth-devouring evil.”
Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 6 (p. 75)

War, Soul, Question, Evil

“Above the punitive city hangs this iron spider; and the criminal who is to be thus crucified by the new law is parricide.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment

“[T]he Christian philosopher of to-day has larger capacities and fuller knowledge than the Israelite of the time of Moses. What the one accepted as literal truth the other cannot accept save as a myth or figure. The children of Israel received without idealisation the statements of their great lawgiver. To them the tables of the law were true tablets of stone, prepared, engraved, broken, and re-engraved; while the graving tool which thus inscribed the law was held undoubtingly to be the finger of God. To us such conceptions are impossible. We may by habit use the words, but we attach to them no definite meaning.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

God, Children, Truth, Knowledge

“… The answer to this problem is: as implied by Hume, we certainly are not justified in reasoning from an instance to the truth of the corresponding law. But to this negative result a second result, equally negative, may be added: we are justified in reasoning from a counterinstance to the falsity of the corresponding universal law (that is, of any law of which it is a counterinstance). Or in other words, from a purely logical point of view, the acceptance of one counterinstance to 'All swans are white' implies the falsity of the law 'All swans are white' - that law, that is, whose counterinstance we accepted. Induction is logically invalid; but refutation or falsification is a logically valid way of arguing from a single counterinstance to - or, rather, against - the corresponding law. This shows that I continue to agree with Hume's negative logical result; but I extend it. This logical situation is completely independent of any question of whether we would, in practice, accept a single counterinstance - for example, a solitary black swan - in refutation of a so far highly successful law. I do not suggest that we would necessarily be so easily satisfied; we might well suspect that the black specimen before us was not a swan.”

Karl Popper book The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section I: The Problem of Induction http://dieoff.org/page126.htm p. 27

Truth, Way, Question, Problem

“The only thing lawful is non-violence. Violence can never be lawful in the sense meant here, i. e., not according to man-made laws, but according to the laws made by Nature for man.”

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

Harijan (27 October 1946) p. 369
1940s

Nature, Sense

“The moment juries or judges go beyond their functions, and take upon themselves to lay down the law or find the facts, not according to the law as it is, but according to the law as they think it ought to be, then the certainty of the law is at an end; there is nothing to rely upon; we are left to the infinite variety and uncertainty of human opinion; to caprice which may at any moment influence the best of us, to feelings and prejudices, perhaps excellent in themselves, but which may distort or disturb our judgment, and distract our minds from the single simple operation of ascertaining whether the facts proved bring the case within the law as we are bound to take it.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 134.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Feeling, Thinking

“I recall an incident involving the late George Stigler at a conference in Spain in the 1980s. Hearing that I had written a book on reason and natural law, Stigler started to ridicule reason, going so far as to say that there is as much reason in a monkey's antics as in any human act. At that point I asked him whether he was trying to tell me something about how he wrote his books; he gave me a blank stare and stormed out of the room.”

Frank Van Dun (1947) Belgian law philosopher

"Argumentation Ethics and the Philosophy of Freedom," http://blog.mises.org/archives/005497.asp Ludwig von Mises Institute (2006-08-22).

Books, Nature

“There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from customs is the unwritten law.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Plato, 51.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 3: Plato

“The reason of a commandment, whether positive or negative, is clear, and its usefulness evident, if it directly tends to remove injustice, or to teach good conduct that furthers the well-being of society, or to impart a truth which ought to be believed either on its own merit or as being indispensable for facilitating the removal of injustice or the teaching of good morals. There is no occasion to ask for the object of such commandments; for no one can, e. g., be in doubt as to the reason why we have been commanded to believe that God is one; why we are forbidden to murder, steal, and to take vengeance, or to retaliate, or why we are commanded to love one another. But there are precepts concerning which people are in doubt, and of divided opinions, some believing they are mere commands, and serve no purpose whatever, whilst others believe that they serve a certain purpose, which, however is unknown to man. Such are those precepts which in their literal meaning do not seem to further any of the three above-named results: to impart some truth, to teach some moral, or to remove injustice. They do not seem to have any influence upon the well-being of the soul by imparting any truth, or upon the well-being of the body by suggesting such ways and rules as are useful in the government of a state, or in the management of a household. …I will show that all these and similar laws must have some bearing upon one of the following three things, viz., the regulation of our opinions, or the improvement of our social relations, which implies two things, the removal of injustice, and the teaching of good morals.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.28

Love, God, People, Truth

“It does not destroy matter, which is reassuring. Rewriting one law of physics is worse than trying to eat one peanut.”

Larry Niven book World of Ptavvs

Source: World of Ptavvs (1966), p. 40

“The common law of England must direct the determination of a common law question. By common-law determinations we are bound; and to them we must always adhere: for, these are the proper constitutional declarations of the law of the land. They are so considered, even by the Court of Chancery itself. When any doubt arises in a cause of equity concerning a point of common law, it is usually referred to the determination of a Court of Common Law.”

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

4 Burr. Part IV., 2377.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)

Question

“True revolutionary doctrine teaches that the only law is rationalism and dynamic optimism.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 11, “Circus of Death” (p. 234)

Optimism

“One, a caliphate is a global government, and you know that's where we're headed. Everybody is headed now towards a global government. Well, so are the Islamic extremists, except theirs is Sharia law and infidels will be beheaded. The Shiite Muslims, the ones in Iran, believe in — and not all of them, not the people necessarily on the street — but the real radicals, the revolutionaries and the people at the very top are called Twelvers. They believe in the Twelfth Imam. And that will — that Twelfth Imam, when he returns, he will set up a global caliphate in ancient Babylon. This one should gravely concern you because he has all of the earmarks — in their own writings — of an antichrist, or the Antichrist. I don't know if he is or not. But there are those who will just claim, you know, he's the Twelfth Imam, et cetera et cetera. And the way to get there is global chaos.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2011-02-01
The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Network
Beck Warns Of The Coming "Caliphate," "Global Government," "Marxists," "Global Chaos" And "The Anti-Christ"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201102010012
2011-02-28
2010s, 2011

People, Way

“The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Men, Age, Support

“It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. This is why the weak are so deeply concerned with the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, as a means of providing some small measure of equality for that which is not equal in fact. Coming from a developing country, I was trained extensively in international law and diplomacy and mistakenly assumed that the great powers, especially the United States, also trained their representatives in diplomacy and accepted the value of it. But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Unvanquished : A U.S. - U.N. Saga (1999), p. 198.
1990s

Time, Training, Country

“I'm trying to bring danger back in to rock 'n' roll and there are no limits and no laws and I break down every barrier put in front of me till the day I die.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

Todd Phillips: Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, Skinny Nervous Guy Prod, 1994. 2007 DVD re-release watched March 1, 2010.

“Based on the law of probability, everything is possible because the sheer existence of possibility confirms the existence of impossibility.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Understanding http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/understanding-4/ From the poems written in English

“Intermediate between mathematics, statistics, and economics, we find a new discipline which, for lack of a better name, may be called econometrics. Econometrics has as its aim to subject abstract laws of theoretical political economy or "pure" economics to experimental and numerical verification, and thus to turn pure economics, as far as possible, into a science in the strict sense of the word.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch (1926) "On a Problem in Pure Economics: Translated by JS Chipman." Preferences, Utility, and Demand: A Minnesota Symposium. 1926."
Original in French:
Intermediaire entre les mathematiques, la statistique et l'economie politique, nous trouvons une discipline nouvelle que ion peut, faute de mieux, designer sous le nom de reconometrie. L'econometrie se pose le but de soumettre les lois abstraites de l'economie politique theorique ou l'economie 'pure' A une verification experimentale et numeriques, et ainsi de constituer, autant que cela est possible, l'economie pure en une science dans le sens restreint de ce mot.
1920

Mathematics, Sense, Science

“Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds.”

Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) Greek-French philosopher

From an interview conducted on 23 March 1983 for the May-August issue of the French journal Lutter ( "Marx today: the tragicomical paradox " http://www.rebeller.se/m.html). It was translated by Franco Schiavoni for the January 1984 issue of the Australian magazine Thesis Eleven.

History, Sense

“Peel delivered the best speech I ever heard in Parliament. It was truly a magnificent speech, sustained throughout, thoroughly with us, and offering even to pass the immediate [repeal of the Corn Laws], if the House are willing. Villiers, Gibson, and myself cheered continually, and I never listened to any human being speaking in public with so much delight.”

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

Letter to his sister Priscilla (16 February 1846), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 147.
1840s

Housing

“The hybrid frustrates the purpose of creation. All things, we are told according to Genesis, were created with their seed in themselves, destined to be fertile. Hybridization seeks to improve God’s work. It seeks to gain the best of two diverse but somewhat related things. The result is a limited advantage but a long range launched including sterility. Second, these laws clearly require a respect for God’s creation. We are not to change one kind into another, or to attempt it. All things we are told were created good. Now when we hold to evolution we cannot see all things as created good. Because evolution is the survival of the fittest, and the best you can say about anything is that it is the fittest. Not that it is the best, not that it is morally the most desirable thing. And though it has survived thus far it may not survive in the next ten thousand years, so that man for example, we are told may be a mistake. Thus we cannot under an evolutionary perspective see all things as created good. But man under God has been created good and the world around him has been created good. Man can kill and eat plants and animals to use this creation under God’s law. But he cannot tamper with it, he cannot hybridize; which is to violate God’s kind. And the penalty for it, of course, is sterility. You can cross a horse and a donkey, but the mule is sterile. You can put all kinds of new variety of squash and carrots and the like on the market, but the penalty for these is sterility. They will not produce a seed. And while they will have certain advantages --the mule has certain advantages over the horse-- they have marked disadvantages, and a greater frailty, sensitivity, nervousness (as with the mule), so that they are a real handicap.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Hybridization and the Law (n. d.)

God, World, Penalty, Change

“What can go wrong will go wrong, because political objectives are so narrowly defined. Without a great breadth of elasticity, a system has countless ways in which to crash and burn, since only one pathway has been designated, by legislated or dictated law, as the correct flight plan. It takes no great statistician to figure out the low probability of an errant political objective landing successfully in one precise landing spot. With so many possible routes in which to fail, government programs seem to boomerang every which way.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 50

Way

“I think there should be no occasion on which it is absolutely, as a point or rule of law, impossible for a man to redeem his character.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

In re Brandreth (1891), L. J. 60 Q. B. D. 504.

Thinking

“An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why "criminals" have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others. Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category "lawbreakers" is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)

Imagination, Question, Time

“Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

New York Times Magazine (23 May 1971)

Future

“Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film. It is just one of the things that crazy people want to do, like starting a law suit or sending long, unsolicited letters to people in the public eye. A letter from a nutter has a recognisable format and orthography, as if all letter-writing nutters have to go through some kind of Top Gun nutter-letter-writing academy.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Source: Memoirs, May Week Was in June (1990), p. 93

People

“Beliefs about how you live your life, matters of private decision, views best kept for private enjoyment, prejudice or entertainment, can't be imposed by the operation of criminal law. Attempts to enforce such views can only make the government the subject of ridicule.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 6 : The Domino Theory and the Tyranny of Majorities

Life, Decision

“There doesn’t seem to be any law that’s there to protect the citizens from massive State surveillance. We have to collectively come up with some fundamental values around people’s right to privacy, the right to be left alone from government, and rights to free speech.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

International Journalism Festival http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/heather-brooke-antitrust-legislation-needed-to-keep-the-internet-free/ Interview with Fabio Chiusi, 12 April 2012. Attributed, In the Media

People

“It is a common fallacy to believe that the law of large numbers acts as a force endowed with memory seeking to return to the original state, and many wrong conclusions have been drawn from this assumption.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter V, Conditional Probability, Stochastic Independence, p. 136.

Memory

“In like manner the Reverend Dr. William A. Smith, President of the Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, in his work upon the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery, deliberately repudiates Mr. Jefferson's view of slavery as a 'grossly offensive error', and attributes the anti-slavery movement to him – which is as wise as to attribute the motion of the earth to Galileo. Judge Wayne, in his late charge at Savannah upon the law against the slave-trade, confirms Mr. Stephens's statement. And, as if to establish it by the most unexpected testimony, Mr. Edward Everett, in his late discourse upon Daniel Webster, said, 'In common with all, or nearly all, the statesmen of the last generation, he believed that free labor would ultimately prevail throughout the continent.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

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

Error

“I am a great admirer of Professor Hayek. Some of his books are absolutely supreme—“The Constitution of Liberty” and the three volumes on “Law, Legislation and Liberty”—and would be well read by almost every hon. Member.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (10 March 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104593 First term as Prime Minister

Books, Reading

“one's twentieth birthday. That day opened the door to a wider life: I reached out to grasp reality. But in fact it was reality which gripped me with its restrictions and constraints and rules which arrogantly claim to be the laws of life, of the universe. To be grown-up really meant resignation; one gave in (if ruefully), laughing a little at one's young dreams.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p. 63 Diaries 1951-1952.

Life, Dreams, Birthday, Reality

“In the new version of the law of supply and demand, jobs are so cheap — as measured by the pay — that a worker is encouraged to take on as many of them as she possibly can.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), Ch. 2: Scrubbing in Maine (p. 60)

“Certainly the people's insistence that their candidates should present themselves ungirt and without a tunic had nothing to do with any suspicion of bribery, for it was not until long afterwards that the abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining the elections. Later on, however, this process of corruption spread to the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of the emperors. For it has rightly been said that the man who first offers banquets and bribes to the people is the first to destroy their liberties.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Gaius Marcius (Coriolanus) 14.2, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Makers of Rome: Nine Lives by Plutarch (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books 1965) ISBN 0140441581, p. 27
Parallel Lives

Money, People, Parting

“Thus viewed, law as it exists in the modern community may be conveniently, although perhaps not comprehensively, defined as the sum total of all those rules of conduct for which there is state sanction.”

Harlan F. Stone (1872–1946) United States federal judge

Law and its Administration http://books.google.com/books?id=_VUf45FZR7cC&pg=PA3&dq=%22Law+as+it+exists+in+the+modern+community%22&hl=en&ei=uCLsTKahLYSs8AbQ5dWIAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Law%20as%20it%20exists%20in%20the%20modern%20community%22&f=false (1915), p. 3.

Communication

“Many people think that the progress of the human race is based on experiences of an empirical, critical nature, but I say that true knowledge is to be had only through a philosophy of deduction. For it is intuition that improves the world, not just following a trodden path of thought. Intuition makes us look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be brought under one law. To look for related facts means holding onto what one has instead of searching for new facts. Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge. Intuition, not intellect, is the 'open sesame' of yourself.”

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. 16

People, World, Search, Nature

“It means a lot to me, the support of the law school faculty as well as the president of the university has been helpful. And I think it’s really an example of what kind of model we should look to in our national discourse, because clearly the president of the university and i disagree about the issues but we are both able to handle it in a civil manner.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

Andrea Mitchell Reports. March 2, 2012.
Media interviews

School, Support, Thinking, Universe

“The law: It has honored us; may we honor it.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner (May 10, 1847); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. II, p. 394

“Like left-liberals, "lite libertarians"—they're the kind that is afflicted with the same spineless conformity; a deformation of the personality euphemized as political correctness—are incapable of appreciating a script or book; a painting or symphony; a stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violates the received laws of political correctness.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

ILANA MERCER, " "Cathy Reisenwitz Redux: Steigerwald, Oy Vey Gevalt!" https://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/01/14/ilana-mercer-cathy-reisenwitz-redux-steigerwald-oy-gevalt/ The British Libertarian Alliance, January 14, 2015 2010s, 2015

Books, Affliction, Painting, Personality

“A second principle of Americanization is identity of economic interest. At this time, after all America has united to win the war, one hesitates to turn a page so shameful in American history. And yet, if America reverts to its former industrial brutality and indifference, Americanization will fail. Identity of economic interest, generally speaking, has meant to the American getting the immigrant to work for him at as low a wage as possible, for as long hours as possible, and scrapping him at the end of the game, with as little compunction as he did an old machine. And the immigrant's successful fellow-countryman, elevated to be a private banker, a padrone, or a notary public, has shared the practices of the native American. Always the immigrant has been in positions of the greatest danger, and with less safeguards for his care. He has been called by number and nicknamed and ridiculed. Frequently trades-unions have excluded him from their benefits, compensation laws have discriminated against him, trades have been closed to him, until he has wondered in the bitterness of his spirit what American opportunity was and how he could pursue life, liberty, and happiness at his work. Whenever he has been discontented, the popular remedy has been higher wages or shorter hours, and rarely the expansion of personal relationships. Very little self-determination has been given to him; on the contrary he has been made a cog in a highly organized industrial machine. His spirit has been imprisoned in the hum of machinery. His special gifts have been lost, even as his lack of skill in mechanical work has injured delicate processes and priceless materials. His pride has been humiliated and his initiative stifled because he has been given little of the artisan's pleasure in seeing his finished product.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, War, Happiness, Pleasure

“Postponing the elections is not possible. Under the Constitution and even under our laws, elections cannot and should not be postponed. Comelec has no power to do that. Their only mandate is to supervise elections in our country every three years. And precisely because elections happen only every three years, there is no reason for the Comelec not to do it effectively.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, April 22). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153227326970610/ 2015, Facebook

Country

“My Lord… it would be well if you would stick to your good law and leave off your bad Latin.”

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

George III of the United Kingdom; reported in John Campbell, The Lives of the Chief Justices of England: From the Norman Conquest till the death of Lord Tenterden (2006), p. 58.
About

“There is no danger to the man that knows
What life and death is; there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.
He goes before them, and commands them all,
That to himself is a law rational.”

George Chapman The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron

Act III, scene i.
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608)

Life, Death, Knowledge

“The fact that each nation came to believe in the virtue of whatever policy happened to be in effect when recovery began supports [the] argument that haphazard economic vacillations play an important role in determining which policy strategies become constructed as economically efficacious. This also tends to undermine the realist/utilitarian view, which suggests that policy improves over time as rational policymakers learn more about universal economic laws from experience, because wildly inconsistent policies won favor in different contexts.”

Frank Dobbin (1956) American sociologist

Frank Dobbin (1993), "The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain and France," in: Theory and Society 22, p. 47; As cited in: Kieran Healy, "The new institutionalism and Irish social policy." Social Policy in Ireland: Principals, Practices and Problems. Oaktree Press, Dublin (1998).

Support, Learning, Universe, Time

“It is traditional in the theory of the firm to define the production opportunity set available to the firm in terms of its boundary -- the maximum attainable set of output quantities for various input quantities, given the state of technology and knowledge. This boundary is the production function of the firm. One of our purposes here is to point out the dependence of such production functions on the structure of property rights and contracting rights within which the firm exists. We redefine the production function in order to recognize the dependence of output on the structure of property and contracting rights. That expanded framework is then used to discuss a concrete set of problems surrounding the role of labor in the firm ranging from the 'labor-managed firm' system (in which tradable capital value residual claims [common stock] are legally prohibited), and the codetermination and industrial democracy movements (in which management participation by labor is required by law), to cooperatives and professional partnerships (i. e., quasi-labor-managed firms which arise out of the voluntary contracting process), and the capitalist corporation.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling. "Rights and production functions: An application to labor-managed firms and codetermination." Journal of business (1979): 469-506.

Democracy, Knowledge, Problem, Dependency

“Thus civil disobedience seemed necessary, but the ‘disobedience’ was aimed directly against seemingly unjust and unconstitutional acts. This is the best tradition of radicalism in the United States. But the illegal activities of the Communists are not directed at any tests of the Constitution or of the ‘laws’ themselves. In fact, the Communists are opposed to the guarantees of the Constitution, no matter how many crocodile tears they might shed while using it amendments to try to overthrow the government.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The New Left: The Resurgence of Radicalism Among American Students (1966), p. 43

Tear

“If our society ever opted for Orwell’s Big Brother approach, the instrument of choice for oppression would have to be the credit wake. In a totally noncash economy with only a vestigial barter black market, a person’s activities could be tracked in real time by monitoring the credit wake of his or her universal card. There were strict laws protecting card privacy but laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 5 (p. 345)

Universe, Time, Personality

“As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can't have a conflict of interest. That's been reported very widely. Despite that, I don't want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can't. And I understand why the president can't have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)

Way, Understanding

“The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the south, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States — Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina— heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.”

David Hunter (1802–1886) Union Army general

1860s, General Order No. 11 (May 1862)

Personality, Country

“The relation between physical sanitary laws and the national welfare is now hardly disputed. At this moment the cholera is stealthily feeling its terrible way along the edges of Europe to this country, and there is not an intelligent man who does not know that it is a divine vengeance upon uncleanliness. Let it seize the unclean city of New York, and it will riot in horror and devastation. Panic will empty the palaces, trade will stop in the warehouses. Those who can will flee, while the poor and wretched, poisoned in tenement-houses, will be huddled in heaps of agony and death. Does any man say that cholera is God's remedy for overpopulation? On the contrary, it is only the ghastly proof that God's laws of human health are disregarded. It is not a proclamation that the world is over-peopled; it is merely a warning for the world to provide decently for its population. God does not create men in his image to rot in tenement-houses, and he will make squalor and filth and misery plague-spots threatening the fairest prosperity, until that prosperity acknowledges in vast sanitary reforms that cleanliness is next to godliness. And if the dread pestilence now approaching our shores would frighten us into universal purgation of our foul cities, it would be seen at this moment hovering in the wintry air, not an angry demon, but a stem angel with a sword of fire to open the path of knowledge and humanity and civilization.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Death, Men, God, People

“I for one would never be a party, unless the law were clear, to saying to any man who put forward his views on those most sacred things, that he should be branded as apparently criminal because he differed from the majority of mankind in his religious views or convictions on the subject of religion. If that were so, we should get into ages and times which, thank God, we do not live in, when people were put to death for opinions and beliefs which now almost all of us believe to be true.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Reg. v. Bradlaugh and others (1883), 15 Cox, C.C. 230.

Death, God, People, Age

“…the covenant people must wage war against the enemies of God, because this war is unto death. The deliberate, refined, and obscene violence of the anti-God forces permits no quarter…this warfare must continue until the Amalekites of the world are blotted out, until God's law-order prevails and His justice reigns.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), P. 308

Death, God, War, People

“The claim set up was nothing less than the right of a general superintendence of the states of Europe, and of the suppression of all changes in their internal government, if those changes should be hostile to what the Holy Alliance called the legitimate principles of government…Every reform of abuses, every improvement in government, which did not originate with a sovereign, of his own free will, was to be prevented. Were this principle to be successfully maintained, the triumph of tyranny would be complete, and the chains of mankind would be riveted for ever…He was one of those old-fashioned politicians who thought that every great political change might be traced to previous misgovernment…Let their lordships look to the revolution of 1688, and then he would ask them, if it could have been carried into effect without the combinations of those great men, who restored and secured our religion, our laws, and our liberties, and without such mutual communications among them as would bring them under the description of a sect or party?”

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

Speech in the House of Lords (19 February 1821) on the debate on Naples. After the revolution in Naples in July 1820 the protocol which affirmed the right of the European Alliance to interfere to crush dangerous internal revolutions had been issued at the Congress of Troppau, October 1820. Parliamentary Debates, N.S. iv, pp. 744-59, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 13-16.
1820s

Men, Hostility, Religion, Communication

“Satan's design in instigating the French revolution was to create an alarm throughout Europe, especially among the influential class, unfavorable to liberty, and so illustrate in France the theory that, were the superstitions of Rome to be overthrown and liberty to be given full sway, all law and order would speedily end. This was a master-stroke of policy, worthy of its author, and designed, as the prophet shows, to overwhelm the "woman" (the reformed Church), and to drive all conservatives and peace-lovers - rulers and ruled - back to union and harmony with Papacy. The failure of the scheme was not due to lack of craftiness in its designer, but to the overruling power of God, whereby he is able to cause all things to work together for good.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 66.

God, Peace, Lovers, Failure

“Freedom under law is like the air we breathe.”

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

1950s, Remarks on the Observation of Law Day (1958)

Freedom

“Quentin looked glum and shook his head. “Unleashing the appetites is not freedom, but another type of slavery. Freedom in the absence of virtue will destroy a country as quickly as any tyranny.”
Victor said, “Virtue imposed from without is not virtue at all, but merely prudence. A man who avoids lying merely because a law tells him to tell the truth will avoid telling the truth as soon as the law tells him to lie.””

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Titans of Chaos (2007), Chapter 4, “The Creatures of Prometheus” Section 4 (p. 55)

Truth, Lie, Lying, Freedom

“I am endeavouring in a general way to explain the laws of double refraction on this hypothesis, but have not yet arrived at any results sufficiently decisive to be communicated.”

William Kingdon Clifford On the Space-Theory of Matter

On the Space-Theory of Matter (read Feb 21, 1870)

Way, Communication, Decision

“Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.”

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

Letter to Thomas Cooper (1810)
1810s

Religion

“I have been reminded that I sit here as counsel for the defendant. I certainly do so, so far as to interpose between him and the counsel for the prosecution, and to see that no improper use of the law is made against him, and that no improper evidence is given to the jury: but the Judge has another task to perform, which is that of assisting the jury in the administration of justice.”

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

Wakefield's Case (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 736.

Justice

“Any law Made for the preserve of a human right, made to guard a human being, cannot sleep long enough to die; but any law that deprives a human being of a natural right -- if that law goes to sleep, it never wakes, it sleeps the sleep of death.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Death, Nature, Sleep

“The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 150.

Effort, Science

“Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out the laws of taste.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

E 69
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)

“Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Religion, Business

“Trump won because he was forcing the media and politicians to talk about real problems facing the country, not recycling the same bromides the GOP has been pushing for the past thirty years. Those may be okay ideas for another time, but not when the country is about to be permanently transformed into a new country, know as "California" where all those zippy Republican ideas have less chance of becoming law than the wish list of the Wicca online community.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2016, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! (2016)

Communication, Idea, Problem, Chance

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XIV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 490 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F373&viewtype=image Close of the first edition (1859). Only use of the term "evolve" or "evolution" in the first edition. In the second http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F376&viewtype=image (1860) through sixth (1872) editions, Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" to read:

Life, Beauty

“Eliminate all forms of monopolistic market power, to include the breakup of large oligopolistic corporations and application of anti-trust laws to labor unions. A Federal incorporation law could be used to limit corporation size and where technology required giant firms for reasons of low cost production the Federal government should own and operate them… Promote economic stability by reform of the monetary system and establishment of stable rules for monetary policy… Reform the tax system and promote equity through income tax… Abolish all tariffs… Limit waste by restricting advertising and other wasteful merchandising practices.”

Henry Calvert Simons (1899–1946) American economist

A Positive Program for Laissez Faire, (1934)

“No one can depute authority. It comes too much from personal accidents, and too little from reason or law to be handed over to others.”

Anthony Trollope book The Duke's Children

Source: The Duke's Children (1879), Ch. 66

Personality

“There was always something about Creative Commons and its name that bugged me, too. The name sounds like a variation of the once-powerful Common Cause political-action committee. A ring of days gone by — nostalgia. All I see here is making the very easy and simple U. S. copyright laws more complex for no apparent reason, except maybe as a protest.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

"Creative Commons Humbug" in PC Magazine (18 July 2005) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838249,00.asp 2000s

Nostalgia

“The hard things are when you have to make your friends disappointed because you think you’re required, for example, by the law to do something that maybe is different than what you would do as a matter of public policy.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U1a8pYMJDM, March 18, 2016, Life Lessons Learned, DC Circuit Court Judge Panel, JRCLS International Law Conference, February 15, 2013, Georgetown University Law Center]; also excerpted quote in:
[March 18, 2016, The Quotable Merrick Garland: A Collection of Writings and Remarks, http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202752327128/The-Quotable-Merrick-Garland-A-Collection-of-Writings-and-Remarks, Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, March 16, 2016, 0162-7325]
DC Circuit Court Judge Panel, JRCLS International Law Conference (2013)

Disappointment, Thinking

“It should be obvious that the criticism of this opinion serves not to present counter-arguments, but to discredit and attack me because I've deviated from the prescribed path. In his intriguing and thoughtful essay on My Race Problem and Ours, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, a self-described social Democrat, correctly observes that 'If racial loyalty is deemed essentially and morally virtuous, then a black person's adoption of positions that are deemed racially disloyal will be seen by racial loyalists as a supremely threatening sin, one warranting the harsh punishments that have historically been visited upon alleged traitors.”

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

Perhaps this is the defensive solidarity to which Richard Wright refers. If so, it is a reaction I understand, but resolutely decline to follow.
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Understanding, Problem, Personality, Loyalty

“I told him that I thought it was law logic — an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Diary record of a comment made by Adams to John Marshall, Charles Francis Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams : Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (1875), p. 372

Justice

“It is not as though "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" was a precept from which splendid fiction could not be drawn; it is rather that what these small-time rebels choose to do is so trivial, so cheap, and in the end, so dreary.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Time

“In response to his grandchildren holding dual passports in a way said to be contrary to law - "What is the big deal? Their mother is an Indian diplomat, so they used an Indian passport. The passports were duly kept in the custody of Indian mission in New York once they had received US passports… When we were taking the kids to the US, we were told as they were natural US citizens they should get US passports."”

Uttam Khobragade (1951) bureaucrat

Devyani's daughters' dual passports raise a stink http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/khobragade-daughters-dual-passports-raise-a-stink-mea-unaware/article1-1194794.aspx, Hindustan Times, 14 March 2014.

Way, Nature

“We have seen it other places, that equivalent of religious zeal leading to flouting of the law in a way that could lead to death … Inevitably, when you get that fanaticism, if you will, you’re going to have trouble. … Are we collectively as a society willing to allow the fanatics to obstruct the general will of the population? That then turns out to be a real test of whether we actually do believe in the rule of law.”

David A. Dodge (1943) Canadian economist

About the Trans Mountain Pipeline, as quoted in People 'are going to die' protesting Trans Mountain pipeline: Former Bank of Canada governor https://edmontonjournal.com/business/energy/people-are-going-to-die-protesting-trans-mountain-pipeline-former-bank-of-canada-governor (June 13, 2018) by Gordon Kent, Edmonton Journal.

Death, Way

“The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words, the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 84
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men, Age

“Fidelity to the Constitution and the law has been the cornerstone of my professional life, and it’s the hallmark of the kind of judge I have tried to be for the past 18 years. If the Senate sees fit to confirm me to the position for which I have been nominated today, I promise to continue on that course.”

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:
[March 18, 2016, http://variety.com/2016/biz/news/obama-merrick-garland-supreme-court-1201731565/, Variety, President Obama Nominates Judge Merrick Garland for Supreme Court, Ted Johnson, March 16, 2016]; and also excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, The Texas Tribune, http://www.texastribune.org/2016/03/16/president-nominates-merrick-garland-supreme-court/, March 16, 2016, In Texas, Obama's Nominee May Draw Attention for EPA Rulings, Jordan Rudner]; and quote also excerpted in source:
[March 18, 2016, http://time.com/4261007/merrick-garland-supreme-court-barack-obama/, Time, President Obama Nominates Merrick Garland for Supreme Court, March 16, 2016, Katie Reilly and Maya Rhodan]
Remarks by Judge Garland upon nomination to Supreme Court of the United States (2016)

Life, Past

“…as I worked with the unionized labor, of the much larger labor force that was outside the purview of the protective labor laws, of any form of social security, access to justice, access to financial services, anything. That tugged at my heart. And those people were unorganized and had no strength to act to seek remedies.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

People, Justice, Heart

“The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him — should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living.
That, he reasoned, is the law of life.
And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so.
The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 15 (p. 266)

Life, Feeling, Understanding, Dead

“Islam's jihad is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviations, plunder, repression, and cruelty. The war waged by [non-Muslim] conquerors, however, aims at promoting lust and animal pleasures. They care not if whole countries are wiped out and many families left homeless. But those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

God's law
As quoted in Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East (2002) by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, pp. 29, 32-36
Disputed

God, War, Pleasure, World

“This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

The Law of the Yukon http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/781.html (1907)

Strong, Despair

“It is true that Judges, as the upholders of the Constitution and the laws, are least likely to err but the possibility of their acting contrary to the Constitution cannot be completely excluded.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

“Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective — economic value, anyway — while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

Ceres, Chapter Eighteen http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=235, 2009.

Question

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature."”

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

It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Free-thinker mentality.
Letter to Beatrice F. in response to a question about whether he was a "free thinker" (17 December 1952), p. 121
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

God, Feeling, Idea, Understanding

“The ancient Greeks knew the laws that govern the propagation of light in a uniform medium and upon its reflection. However, the law governing the refraction of light as it passes from one transparent medium to another was unknown until the last century. Snell discovered it, Descartes tried to explain it and Fermat criticized his explanation. Since then, many great geometers have researched the problem, although no one has yet found a way of harmonizing the law of refraction with more fundamental laws that Nature must obey.”

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)

Way, Nature, Problem, Light

“"Grigory Petrovitch, let us weep, let us weep with joy!" he said in a thin voice, and then at once burst out laughing in a loud bass guffaw. "Ho-ho-ho! This is a fine daughter-in-law for you too! Everything is in its place in her; all runs smoothly, no creaking, the mechanism works well, lots of screws in it."”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 3, pp. 193-4

Joy, Daughters

“De Bellaigue is at pains to portray Mossadegh as — in the words of the jacket copy — “one of the first liberals of the Middle East, a man whose conception of liberty was as sophisticated as any in Europe or America.” But the trouble is, there is nothing in Mossadegh’s career — spanning half a century, as provincial governor, cabinet minister, and finally prime minister — to portray him as even remotely a lover of liberty. De Bellaigue quotes Mossadegh as saying that a trusted leader is “that person whose every word is accepted and followed by the people.” To which de Bellaigue adds: “His understanding of democracy would always be coloured by traditional ideas of Muslim leadership, whereby the community chooses a man of outstanding virtue and follows him wherever he takes them.” Word for word, that could have been the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s definition of a true leader. Mossadegh also made a habit of appearing in his street meetings with a copy of the Koran in hand. According to de Bellaigue, Mossadegh liked to say that “anyone forgetting Islam is base and dishonourable, and should be killed.” During his premiership, Mossadegh demonstrated his dictatorial tendency to the full: Not once did he hold a full meeting of the council of ministers, ignoring the constitutional rule of collective responsibility. He dissolved the senate, the second chamber of the Iranian parliament, and shut down the Majlis, the lower house. He suspended a general election before all the seats had been decided and chose to rule with absolute power. He disbanded the high council of national currency and dismissed the supreme court. During much of his tenure, Tehran lived under a curfew while hundreds of his opponents were imprisoned. Toward the end of his premiership, almost all of his friends and allies had broken with him. Some even wrote to the secretary general of the United Nations to intervene to end Mossadegh’s dictatorship. But was Mossadegh a man of the people, as de Bellaigue portrays him? Again, the author’s own account provides a different picture. A landowning prince and the great-great-grandson of a Qajar king, Mossadegh belonged to the so-called thousand families who owned Iran. He and all his children were able to undertake expensive studies in Switzerland and France. The children had French nannies and, when they fell sick, were sent to Paris or Geneva for treatment. (De Bellaigue even insinuates that Mossadegh might have had a French sweetheart, although that is improbable.) On the one occasion when Mossadegh was sent to internal exile, he took with him a whole retinue, including his cook… As a model of patriotism, too, Mossadegh is unconvincing. According to his own memoirs, at the end of his law studies in Switzerland, he had decided to stay there and acquire Swiss citizenship. He changed his mind when he was told that he would have to wait ten years for that privilege. At the same time, Farmanfarma secured a “good post” for him in Iran, tempting him back home.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Myths of Mossadegh" https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/302213/myths-mossadegh/page/0/1, National Review (June 25, 2012).

Pain, Children, People, Family

“When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

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

1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776)

God, People, Nature

“This again, led judges and lawyers to insist on the importance of possession, or seisin, as evidence and presumptions of title, and thus to give to the seisin of land that unique importance in English land law which it has ever been held.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter IV, Improved Legal Procedure, p. 50

“The establishment and maintenance of sound and fair social conditions; so that there should be no oppression nor injustice, but a square deal for everybody; so that the strong should not be permitted to prey upon the weak; so that the law of helpfulness should prevail, instead of the law of ravine … such sound and fair social conditions would bring to the community in which they were established and maintained, unexampled, and marvelous prosperity; and this prosperity and peace and happiness would promptly advertise themselves and set up an irresistible attraction. Such a society as this would be a magnet that would draw to itself, all the children of men. They would all want to be in it.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: The Nation and the Kingdom (1909), pp. 4-5

Men, Happiness, Children, Peace

“Cursed is the man, and void of law and right,
Unworthy property, unworthy light,
Unfit for public rule, or private care,
That wretch, that monster, that delights in war:
Whose lust is murder, and whose horrid joy
To tear his country, and his kind destroy!”

Homér Iliad

IX. 63–64 (tr. Alexander Pope).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

War, Tear, Light, Joy

“Every man of the commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and criminals) is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. …liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who are to frame the laws and who are to be the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace. For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need to have representatives in the Legislature than the rich one. …they who have no voice or vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

"Some Good Whig Principles. Declaration of those Rights of the Community of Great Britain, without which they cannot be Free," as quoted in Memoirs of the Llife and Writings of Benjamin Franklin https://books.google.com/books?id=jmMFAAAAQAAJ (1818) by Benjamin Franklin and William Temple Franklin Attributed

Life, Men, God, Peace

“It is a public scandal when the law is forced to uphold a dishonest act.”

Edward Macnaghten, Baron Macnaghten (1830–1913) Anglo-Irish rower, barrister, politician and Lord of Appeal in Ordinary

Nordenfelt v. Maxim Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Co. (1894), L. R. App. Ca. Part 5, p. 573.

“If man were not free, then he could not conceive of causality at all, and could not form any concept of it. Insight into lawfulness is already freedom from it.”

Otto Weininger (1880–1903) austrian philosopher and writer

Collected Aphorisms

Freedom

“I recall what the late Tui Nayau said at his last Lau Provincial Council meeting on Ono, Lau, in October 2000: 'There can be no reconciliation or peace until the coup investigations are completed and the rule of law is upheld'.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

On the government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, 24 July, 2005

Peace

“I view with utmost concern the imposition of martial law in Maguindanao province, especially after the reported discovery of arms caches and documents related to past elections. I hope that this is not the case of "Maguindanao today-the Philippines tomorrow."”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: on the Declaration of Martial Law in Maguindanao

Hope, Past

“Law enforcement ranks are filled with people like my grandfather. But, to be clear, although I am from a law enforcement family, and have spent much of my career in law enforcement, I’m not looking to let law enforcement off the hook. Those of us in law enforcement must redouble our efforts to resist bias and prejudice. We must better understand the people we serve and protect—by trying to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement. We must understand how that young man may see us. We must resist the lazy shortcuts of cynicism and approach him with respect and decency.”

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

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People, Family, Feeling, Understanding

“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Letter to Husák

Life, Universe

“Gentlemen, I speak for myself as well as for you: I never read anything about what may come before me in a Court of Justice; I keep my mind free from everything of the kind. There is often a necessity for me to look into the law: but I never suffer my mind to be biassed by reports, or such papers or pamphlets as are written with a view to pervert justice.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Wilkes' Case (1763), 19 How. St. Tr. 1410.

Justice, Suffering, Reading

“When the army was mustered, it was found to amount to "fifty thousand mounted men clad in armour and coats of mail," with which they advanced to fight against the Rai of Benares… The Rai of Benares, Jai Chand, the chief of idolatry and perdition, advanced to oppose the royal troops with an army… The Rai of Benares, who prided himself on the number of his forces and war elephants," seated on a lofty howdah, received a deadly wound from an arrow, and "fell from his exalted seat to the earth." His head was carried on the point of a spear to the commander, and " his body was thrown to the dust of contempt." "The impurities of idolatry were purged by the water of the sword from that land, and the country of Hind was freed from vice and superstition."… From that place the royal army proceeded towards Benares 'which is the centre of the country of Hind, and here they destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations; and the knowledge of the law became promulgated, and the foundations of religion were established.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the fight with the Rai of Banares and capture of Asni and of Benares. Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 222-223 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Men, War, Religion, Knowledge

“If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (15 October 1912), as cited in A Treasury of Jewish Quotations, ed. Joseph L. Baron, Rowman & Littlefield (1996), p. 269 : ISBN 1568219482
Extra-judicial writings

Quotes about laws page 52

Quotes about laws
page 52