quotations about law
In my opinion, the law is not abstract, nor is the U.S. Constitution inherently good. The Constitution condoned 89 years of slavery in the U.S., and common law condoned 156 years of slavery before that. If history demonstrates anything, it is that the law is not the arbiter of morality but a parody of it. Legal justification should be regarded as the lowest rationale for a society's state of affairs, and yet the law is always our first form of recourse in adjudicating differences in public policy.
JOHN WINSTEAD
"Law is too small to contain social justice", WKU Herald, March 23, 2016
Engaging with the law is fine in the short term, but true liberation from oppression will not come from the law. As history bears out, true liberation has always and will always come about in spite of the law, not with it.
JOHN WINSTEAD
"Law is too small to contain social justice", WKU Herald, March 23, 2016
The trend towards throwing new laws at everything continues apace.
JOHN GARDNER
"When law is part of the problem", Oxford University Press blog, September 14, 2012
The law is like Swiss cheese. The holes are the truth, and lawyers are like roaches crawling through the cheese. You can use the holes to get from one part of the cheese to another, but you can't eat the holes, you can only eat the cheese.
DON NIGRO
Tainted Justice
We are either a nation of laws or we aren't.
CURTICE MANG
"Satire: Nogales, no English: Where the law is an ass", Communities Digital News, March 29, 2016
Laws are dangerous to everyone, innocent and guilty alike, because they have no human understanding in and of themselves. They must be interpreted.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
Law hath dominion over all things, over universal mind and matter; For there are reciprocities of rights, which no creature can gainsay.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Laws, however divine in origin and institution, would be found of little coercion among men, were the administration of them not committed to mortals.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Of course you got rights, the law's on your side, but sometimes the law takes a long time to kick in and so it gets put in the hands of us poor suckers on duty. You get my drift?
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance, Dance, Dance
For he that is delighted by concord,
And who abideth in the Law,
Falleth not from Security.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
The law is a battery, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The law is more easily understood by few than many words. For all words are subject to ambiguity, and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the law is multiplication of ambiguity. Besides, it seems to imply (by too much diligence) that whosoever can evade the words is without the compass of the law.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
From real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Anarchical Fallacies
The law itself is accused of iniquity, and impeached, like the orators of Athens when they have persuaded the assembly to pass unjust decrees.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Songs of the Doomed
There never was a law yet made, I conceive, that hit the taste exactly of every man, or every part of the community; of course, if this be a reason for opposition, no law can be executed at all without force, and every man or set of men will in that case cut and carve for themselves; the consequences of which must be deprecated by all classes of men, who are friends to order, and to the peace and happiness of the country.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Major-General Daniel Morgan
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law's treatment.
DAVID MAMET
The Secret Knowledge
When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
NELSON MANDELA
Long Walk to Freedom
The people's awe and innate fear will hold injustice back by day, by night, so long as the people leave the laws intact, just as they are: muddy the cleanest spring, and all you'll have to drink is muddy water.
AESCHYLUS
Eumenides
If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in House of Commons, Feb. 3, 1949