The Great Infidels (1881)
Context: Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem. No one should attempt to refute an argument by pronouncing the name of some man, unless he is willing to adopt all the ideas and beliefs of that man. It is better to give reasons and facts than names. An argument should not depend for its force upon the name of its author. Facts need no pedigree, logic has no heraldry, and the living should not awed by the mistakes of the dead.
“I am not for stirring a single pebble of the common law.”
2 Wils. 341.
Collins v. Blantern (1767)
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John Eardley Wilmot 22
English judge 1709–1792Related quotes
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 274
“I think that common law is better than equity.”
Angus v. Clifford (1891), L. J. Rep. (N. S.) 60 C. D. 455.
4 Burr. Part IV., 2377.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)
Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764) Broken link http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf. Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, p. 459
1760s
"What I Would Tell a Son," Family Weekly (14 July 1963).
The Queen v. Tutchin (1704), 1 Salk. 51 pl. 14.
Others
Source: Loving country you live in part of Muslim faith, says Ahmadi leader, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/06/loving-country-you-live-in-part-of-muslim-faith-says-ahmadi-leader,
“Listen, here is the law! I am the law! These boys go to work!”
Speech on city government to the Emory Methodist Episcopal Church in Jersey City (10 November 1937), quoted in New York Times. (11 November 1937), p. 1, responding to the director of the Board of Education's special service bureau, upon being told that the law required two young delinquents to go to school rather than work, as they would have preferred.