Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 10, Of Aristocracy, Conclusion
Variant translation : Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are but a laughing-stoke ; and, so far from such laws restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, they rather heighten them.
Variant: All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men, that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.
“True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them — the desire to do right — is precisely the same.”
Letter to General P.G.T. Beauregard (3 October 1865)
1860s
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Robert E. Lee 55
Confederate general in the Civil War 1807–1870Related quotes
1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776)
"On Eating and Drinking".
Source: Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)
Context: Foolish people — when I say "foolish people" in this contemptuous way I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do.
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 11.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), XI : The Practical Problem
Fryderyk Skarbek (1828), cited in: Karl Marx. Human Requirements and Division of Labour https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm, Manuscript, 1844.
According to Larry Azar (Evolution and Other Fairy Tales, AuthorHouse, 2005, p. 470), Chesterton made this statement on 16 March 1907
Letter to The Tribune (20 December 1940), later published in A Patriot After All, 1940-1941 (1999)
Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter III, Section 29, pg.177
No. 4, What Is It
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792), Several Questions Answered