“We have the proof on hand, that instead of the laws being honored, they have been violated in every instance of persecution against this people; instead of the laws being made honorable, they have been trampled under the feet of lawyers, judges, sheriffs, governors, legislators, and nearly all the officers of the government; such persons are the most guilty of breaking the laws. To diverge a little, in regard to those who have persecuted this people and driven them to the mountains, I intend to meet them on their own grounds. It was asked this morning how we could obtain redress for our wrongs; I will tell you how it could be done, we could take the same law they have taken, viz., mobocracy, and if any miserable scoundrels come here, cut their throats. (All the people said, Amen.) This would be meting out that treatment to wicked men, which they had measured to innocent persons. We could meet them on their own ground, when they will not honor the law, but will kill the Prophets and destroy the innocent.”

— Brigham Young

Journal of Discourses 2:311 (July 8, 1855)
1850s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We have the proof on hand, that instead of the laws being honored, they have been violated in every instance of persecu…" by Brigham Young?

Brigham Young 52

Latter Day Saint movement leader 1801–1877

Related quotes

“What is a public meeting? It is not an anarchical combination—it is not a mob—it is an assemblage of rational beings to which, if the invitation be general, every man has a right to go, and the Government reporter has a right to go, but only like others and subject to the ordinary law. But if instead of appealing to the promoters of the meeting…to afford the Government reporter facilities, if instead of that the method of violence is resorted to, then I say the law was broken by the agents of the law. It is idle to speak to the Irish people of the duty of obeying the law, or to bring in Coercion Bills to make them obey the law, if the very Government that so speaks and that brings in these Bills has agents who violate the law by violently breaking up orderly public meetings, and who are sustained by the Ministers of the Crown in this illegal action.”

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

Speech in Nottingham (18 October 1887) referring to the Mitchelstown Massacre, quoted in The Times (19 October 1887), p. 6.
1880s

“The law,” he said, “is above the criminal and the judge, and rules them both. The law is inescapable, for an action is either lawful or unlawful. The law, indeed, may be said to have a life of its own, an existence quite apart from the finite lives of the beings who administer it. The law governs every aspect of human behavior; therefore, to the same extent that humans are lawful beings, the law is human. And being human, the law has its idiosyncrasies, just as a man has his. For a citizen who abides by the law, the law is distant and difficult to find. For those who reject and violate it, the law emerges from its musty sepulchers and goes in search of the transgressor.”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 15 (p. 65)

“Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

interview, 1980
1980s

“We have a moral duty to offer support and safety to LGBT people fleeing repression for which Britain shares responsibility…. It is now Pride season in Britain. Members of the government will wrap themselves in the helped construct anti-gay laws across the globe that still endure today. The victims of such persecution need our support. Instead, they are being terrorised. It is a national scandal – and the silence over it must end.”

Owen Jones (writer)

The government’s treatment of gay refugees shames Britain https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/07/lgbt-rights-deportation-gay-lesbian-refugees (7 June 2018), '.

“While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

“People tell me, "Oh, you must not advocate doing anything illegal." My answer to them is that I have been a law-abiding man all my life. I believe in law and order. I believe that we must have a society governed strictly by laws, not by mobs or by any tyrant's whims of the moment -- or by any clever tribe of alien manipulators who have gained control of our mass media. But does anyone really believe that we have a society governed by laws today? Let us remember that we are living now in the era of O. J. Simpson and Bill Clinton. We have laws on the books, and we have police and courts which have the theoretical responsibility for enforcing those laws. And when it is Politically Correct to do so, they will.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Our Revolutionary Right, 1999.
1990s, 1990

“I'm not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Quoted in "Stephen Hawking prepares for weightless flight", New Scientist (26 April 2007) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11722-stephen-hawking-prepares-for-weightless-flight.html

“Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Letter accepting the nomination for governor of New York (October 1882).

“The time has been in Israel under the law of God, the celestial law, or that which pertains to the celestial law, for it is one of the laws of that kingdom where our Father dwells, that if a man was found guilty of adultery, he must have his blood shed, and that is near at hand. But now I say, in the name of the Lord, that if this people will sin no more, but faithfully live their religion, their sins will be forgiven them without taking life.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 4:219 (Feb. 8, 1857)
1850s

“It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Brigham Young 52

Related quotes

Related topics