law Quotes

“Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.”

“‘The only true law is that which leads to freedom,’ Jonathan said. ‘There is no other.’”

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

“It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and more puritanical than the laws.”

“Laws cannot succeed in rekindling the ardor of an extinguished faith, but men may be interested in the fate of their country by the laws.”

This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

“A State may survive the influence of a host of bad laws, and the mischief they cause is frequently exaggerated; but a law which encourages the growth of the canker within must prove fatal in the end, although its bad consequences may not be immediately perceived.”

“I believe that the men who will live under the new forms of society will make frequent use of their private judgment; but I am far from thinking that they will often abuse it.”

“The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can’t navigate. . . . But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I’m a forester.”

“When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.”

“Men’s indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.”

“You promis’d once, a progeny divine Of Romans, rising from the Trojan line, In after times should hold the world in awe, And to the land and ocean give the law.”

“Just in proportion as the desire grows, our fear lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and finally be recognized as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship.”

“Ninety percent of the time. It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.”

“The emperors, if we except those tyrants whose capricious folly violated every law of nature and decency, disdained that pomp and ceremony which might offend their countrymen, but could add nothing to their real power.”

“Now the Law of the Jungle lays down that if there is any dispute as to the right of a cub to be accepted by the Pack, he must be spoken for by at least two members of the Pack who are not his father and mother.”

“Cates, I’ll change your plea and we’ll call off the whole business—on one condition. If you honestly believe you committed a criminal act against the citizens of the state and the minds of their children. If you honestly believe that you’re wrong and the law’s right. Then the hell with it.”

“Now what will Drummond do? He’ll try to make us forget the lawbreaker and put the law on trial.”

“Mr. Drummond. You’ve got to call the whole thing off. It’s not too late. Bert knows he did wrong. He didn’t mean to. And he’s sorry. Now why can’t he just stand up and say to everybody: ‘I did wrong. I broke a law. I admit it. I won’t do it again.’ Then they’d stop all this fuss, and—everything would be like it was.”

“My friends of Hillsboro, you know why I have come here. I have not come merely to prosecute a lawbreaker, an arrogant youth who has spoken out against the Revealed Word.”

If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience.

“This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He did not know anything about this law, for it was no generalization of the mind, not a something acquired by experience in the world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct - of the same instinct that made him howl at the moon and starts of nights and that made him fear death and the unknown.”

“From a caprice of nature, not from the ignorance of man. Not a mistake has been made in the working. But we cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”

“I am not what you call a civilised man! I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again!”

“White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.”

″ Man is without any doubt the most interesting fool there is. Also the most eccentric. He hasn’t a single written law, in his Bible or out of it, which has any but just one purpose and intention -- to limit or defeat the law of God.”

“Their greatest danger was in the disbelief of their teachers. Though every one had a copy of the law, few read it; all were ready, by some excuse, to avoid this duty. Some asserted they knew it, yet never thought on it: some called these the laws of past times; not of the present. Other said the Great King did not regard the actions of his subjects, that he had neither mines nor dungeons, and that all would certainly be taken to the Heavenly City.”

“The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.”

Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law.

“The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night—because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.‘”

“When the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash.”

“But everywhere, sooner or later, he was stopped by men in white shirts with strict, smug expressions on their faces. And one couldn’t fight them. Not only did they have the state on their side, they were the state.”

“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

“He who always greets and constantly reveres the aged, four things will increase to him, viz. life, beauty, happiness, power. But he who lives a hundred years, vicious and unrestrained, a life of one day is better if a man is virtuous and reflecting. And he who lives a hundred years, ignorant and unrestrained, a life of one day is better if a man is wise and reflecting.And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength. And he who lives a hundred years, not seeing beginning and end, a life of one day is better if a man sees beginning and end. And he who lives a hundred years, not seeing the immortal place, a life of one day is better if a man sees the immortal place. And he who lives a hundred years, not seeing the highest law, a life of one day is better if a man sees the highest law.”

“It was puzzling that such a muddy little river like the Rio Grande should make such a difference in terms of what was lawful and what not.”

“Segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.”

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law.”

“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest JP court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.”

“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.”

“That was the one thing that made me think, well, this may be the shadow of a beginning. That jury took a few hours. An inevitable verdict, maybe, but usually it takes ‘em just a few minutes.”

“Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.”

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

“What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue.”

“One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterward.”

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

“The law roasted her to death at a slow fire.”

“By law, I could not have another, but my in-laws were desperate for a boy, a male heir who could carry on the family name. If we had lived in the countryside, they might have just abandoned or drowned the baby girl … However, there was one loophole to the one-child rule: if your baby had a handicap, you were allowed to have another.”

“Because,” she told him, her voice taut, “now that you have saved my life, you are, by the law of my people, responsible for me, and I for you. Where you go, I must also go.”

“What we don’t like, what *I* don’t like, is the hypocrisy of these people. I want to hear them confess. They they, or some of their countrymen and their country’s government, violated the precepts of Christian, civilized, lawful life was bad enough; they they won’t see it, or say it, is what really rowels.”

“We do not have the ability in ourselves to accomplish the least of God’s tasks. This is the law of grace. ”

“Be you content, fair maid. It is the law, not I, condemn your brother. Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, It should be thus with him. He must die tomorrow. ”

“The law is not a “light” for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. ...The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely.”

″... no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.”

“The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence - here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for ‘laws.’ ”

“Everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.”

“Connor knows his situation calls for justified caution—not just tonight, but for the next two years. Then once he turns eighteen, he’s home free.”

“The pain involved in a premeditated broken heart would easily compare with a case of assault, and yet no court of law would recognize it as a crime. A broken arm heals.”

“Maybe there is a law after all. Of nature. Like gravity. An unwritten axiom that governs out emotional dealings. What you do comes back to you in twice the force. We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by them.”

“For as man is the best of all animals when he has reached his full development, so he is worst of all when divorced from law and justice.”

″‘Then shall the king’s law be law of mercy from this day, and never more be law of blood! Up from thy knees and away! To the Tower and say the king decrees the duke of Norfolk shall not die!’ The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another prodigious shout burst forth— ‘The reign of blood is ended! Long live Edward, King of England!‘”

“What struck Tom’s youthful imagination was the desperate and lawless character of most of the stories. Was the guard hoaxing him? He couldn’t help hoping that they were true. It’s very odd how almost all English boys love danger. You can get ten to join a game, or climb a tree, or swim a stream, when there’s a chance of breaking their limbs or getting drowned, for one who’ll stay on level ground, or in his depth, or play quoits or bowls.”

“I fell in love with the organization, the way language- the pure truth in the words- was nonnegotiable.”

″ ‘Rabbit,’ cried the king, ‘why did you break a law of nature and go running, running, running, in the daytime?’ ‘Oh, King,’ said the rabbit, ‘it was the python’s fault. I was in my house minding my own business when that big snake came in and chased me out.’ ”

“Katherine Tyler, though art here accused that not having the fear of God before thine eyes thou hast had familiarity with Satan the grand enemy of God and man, and that by his institution and help thou hast in a preternatural way afflicted and done harm to the bodies and estates of sundry of His Majesty’s subjects, in the third year of His Majesty’s reign, for which by the law of God and the low of the Colony thou deservest to die.”

“We made it a law here that every family shall go to a different restaurant every night of the month, around the village square in rotation. In this way no family of Krakatoa has to work more than once every twenty days, and every family is assured a great variety of food.”

These are new laws indeed / By which Zeus tyrannically rules; / And the great powers of the past he now destroys.