Robert Bolt Quotes

“Well . . . I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties . . . they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

“I know what’s legal not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.”

“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.”

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?

“Lord, grant us rest tonight, and if we must be wakeful, cheerful.”

“If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that /needs/ no heroes.”

“But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all... why then perhaps we /must/ stand fast a little --even at the risk of being heroes.”

“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.”

“I’m breathing . . . are you breathing too? It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“A man should go where he won’t be tempted.”

“I have not disobeyed my sovereign. I truly believe no man in England is safer than myself.”

“It isn’t difficult to keep alive, friends just don’t -make trouble-or if you must make trouble, make the sort of trouble that’s expected. Well, I don’t need to tell you that. Good night. If we should bump into one another, recognize me”

“You don’t know how to flatter.”

“In matters of conscience, the loyal subject is more bounden to be loyal to his conscience than to any other thing.”

“Every man has his price!”

“My master Thomas More would give anything to anyone . . . .some day someone’s going to ask him for something that he wants to keep.”

“To frighten a man there must be something in the cupboard, must there not?”

“What’s in me for him to miss?”

“You have long known the secrets of my heart.”

“We feel that since you are known to have been a friend of More’s, your participation will show that there is nothing in the nature of a ‘persecution,’ but only the strict processes of law.”