“Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imagined necessities… are the greatest cozenage that men can put upon the Providence of God, and make pretenses to break known rules by.”

—  Oliver Cromwell

Speech to the First Protectorate Parliament (12 September 1654)

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 "Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imagined necessities… are the greatest cozenage that men can put upon the P…" by Oliver Cromwell?
Oliver Cromwell photo
Oliver Cromwell 49
English military and political leader 1599–1658

Related quotes

Antonie Pannekoek photo

“The capitalist is not driven by the desire to provide his fellow-men with the necessities of life; he is driven by the necessity of making money.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Section 1.1, "Labor"
Workers Councils (1947)

Oliver Cromwell photo

“Since providence and necessity has cast them upon it, he should pray God to bless their counsels.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

On the trial of Charles I (December 1648)

Jordan Peterson photo

“Those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.”

Jordan Peterson book Beyond Order

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 85

William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell photo

“In the first place, it is not improper to observe, that the law of cases of necessity is not likely to be well furnished with precise rules; necessity creates the law, it supersedes rules; and whatever is reasonable and just in such cases, is likewise legal; it is not to be considered as matter of surprise, therefore, if much instituted rule is not to be found on such subjects.”

William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell (1745–1836) British politician

The Gratitudine (18 December 1801); as published in Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Admiralty, Commencing with the Judgments of the Right Hon. Sir William Scott, Michaelmas Term, 1798, Vol. III (1802) http://books.google.com/books?id=-vcvAAAAYAAJ, p. 266.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,—Necessity will make him submit,—but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;—that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Oliver Cromwell photo

“Necessity has no law.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564)

Francois Rabelais photo

“Necessity has no law.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 15.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Law is mighty, mightier necessity.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Act I, A Spacious Hall
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

William Greenough Thayer Shedd photo

“The law is obligated to punish the transgressor as much as the transgressor is obligated to obey the law — law has no option. Justice has but one function. The necessity of penalty is as great as the necessity of obligation. The law itself is under law; that is, it is under the necessity of its own nature; and therefore the only possible way whereby a transgressor can escape the penalty of the law, is for a substitute to endure it for him. The deep substrata and base of all God's ethical attributes are eternal law and impartial justice.”

William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1820–1894) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 267.

Carl Sandburg photo

“One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time‎ (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 448

Related topics