“The family feuds or the village feuds often had to do with an idea of honor. Perhaps it was a peasant idea; perhaps this idea of honor is especially important to a society without recourse to law or without confidence in law.”

Ch. 1 Marchamont Nedham : The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/print_documents/v1ch16s15.html <!-- The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States vol. VI (1851) p. 9 -->
1780s, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)
Context: The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shall not covet," and "Thou shall not steal," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 42: The Poet

Source: Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (1971), p. 5

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

The Promise of Space http://books.google.com/books?id=FWwhAAAAMAAJ&dq=The+Promise+of+Space&ei=ab0yR__TKZzuoAL_mf3RDw&ie=ISO-8859-1&pgis=1 (1968); This and similar statements attributed to Mahatma Gandhi and J. B. S. Haldane may ultimately be derived from a statement attibuted to Arthur Schopenhauer:
On Clarke's Laws
Context: Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:(1) "It's completely impossible — don't waste my time";
(2) "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";
(3) "I said it was a good idea all along."

Address on sentencing (1885)
Context: The Court. has done the work for me, and although at first appearance it seems to be against me, I am so confident in the idea which I have had the honor to express yesterday, that I think it is for good and not for my loss. Up to this moment, I have been considered by a certain party as insane, by another party as a criminal, by another party as a man with whom it was doubtful whether to have any intercourse. So there was hostility and there was contempt, and there was avoidance To-day, by the verdict of the Court, one of these three situations has disappeared.
I suppose that after having been condemned, I will cease to be called a fool, and for me it is a great advantage. I consider it as a great advantage. If I have a mission, I say "If " for the sake of those who doubt, but for my part it means "Since," since I have a mission, I cannot fulfil my mission as long as I am looked upon as an insane being-human being, at the moment that I begin to ascend that scale, I begin to succeed.

"Letter to Mr. B — ".

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter III, The Movement Of Theory, p. 30.