quotations about law
In written laws, men ... make a difference between the letter and the sentence of the law: And when by the letter is meant whatsoever can be gathered from the bare words, 'tis well distinguished. For the significance of almost all words, are either themselves, or in the metaphorical use of them, ambiguous, and may be drawn in argument to make many senses, but there is only one sense of the law.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Justice is immortal, eternal, and immutable, like God himself; and the development of law is only then a progress when it is directed towards those principles which, like him, are eternal; and whenever prejudice or error succeeds in establishing in customary law any doctrine contrary to eternal justice, it is one of the noblest duties, gentlemen ... to show that an unjust custom is a corrupt practice, an abuse; and by showing this, to originate that change, or rather development in the unwritten, customary law, which is necessary to make it protect justice, instead of opposing and violating it.
LOUIS KOSSUTH
Select Speeches
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
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
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
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
The law is a pretty bird, and has charming wings; it would be quite a bird of paradise if it did not carry such a terrible bill.
DOUGLAS JERROLD
The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold
The centripetal absorption in the home-made mysteries and sleight-of-hand of the law would be a perfectly harmless occupation if it did not consume so much time and energy that might better be spent otherwise. And if it did not, incidentally, consume so much space in the law libraries. It seems never to have occurred to most of the studious gents who diddle around in the law reviews with the intricacies of contributory negligence, consideration, or covenants running with the land that neither life nor law can be confined within the forty-four corners of some cozy concept. It seems never to have occurred to them that they might be diddling while Rome burned.
FRED RODELL
"Goodbye to Law Reviews", 23 Virginia Law Review 38-45, Nov. 1936
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 like to Cobwebs catch small Flies, Great ones break thro' before your eyes.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1734
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
The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed--and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
Memorial Day remarks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, May 30, 1963
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
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
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
Laws are but words. Spoken, they may be ineffectual as the air that bears them. Even when written, they are of no effect unless enacted by people who understand them and take them seriously.
ALAN KEYES
"A government of laws and not of elitist student bodies", Renew America, April 4, 2016
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
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
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle size are alone entangled in.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
The law hath so many contradictions and varyings from itself, that the law may not improperly be called a law-breaker. It is become too changeable a thing to be defined: it is made little less a Mystery than the Gospel. The clergy and the lawyers, like the Freemasons, may be supposed to take an oath not to tell the secret.
GEORGE SAVILE
"Of Laws", A Character of King Charles the Second: and Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections