quotations about law
The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Address at the Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul, Sep. 2, 1901
Today, the worst laws on top of bad laws are destroying what little freedom we have left. Simple as that. So I'm for one new law: No new laws.
CRAIG HALL
"Make it a blessed Christmas and an inalienable new year", The Grand Valley Business Times, December 22, 2015
There is so much law, touching on so many aspects of our lives, that it would be impossible for us to grasp it all, or to follow it even if we could grasp it. Even as a lawyer I can't keep up with the politicians in their impotent zeal to put a stop to things.
JOHN GARDNER
"When law is part of the problem", Oxford University Press blog, September 14, 2012
But if the will of the people, the decrees of the senate, the adjudications of magistrates, were sufficient to establish rights, then it might become right to rob, right to commit adultery, right to substitute forged wills, if such conduct were sanctioned by the votes or decrees of the multitude. But if the opinions and suffrages of foolish men had sufficient weight to outbalance the nature of things, then why should they not determine among them, that what is essentially bad and pernicious should henceforth pass for good and beneficial? Or why, since law can make right out of injustice, should it not also be able to change evil into good?
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
The Laws
When each citizen submits himself to the authority of law he does not thereby decrease his independence or freedom, but rather increases it. By recognizing that he is a part of a larger body which is banded together for a common purpose, he becomes more than an individual, he rises to a new dignity of citizenship. Instead of finding himself restricted and confined by rendering obedience to public law, he finds himself protected and defended and in the exercise of increased and increasing rights.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
speech, May 30, 1924
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
Bad laws are easy to legislate, but tough to implement.
R. JAGANNATHAN
"Land Act, Food Security: Why UPA's best and brightest made bad laws", Firstpost, June 28, 2014
This is how bad laws are made: You compile a bunch populist sections, then cleverly hide in them some draconian ones, which ultimately become the central laws.
ALI SABAMBA
user comment, "Kenyan government bans 'seed' preachers, sex-talk shows", Standard Digital News, January 8, 2016
Law has been called a bottomless pit, not so much because of its depth, as that its windings are so obscure nobody can see the end.
G. P. MORRIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
There are times, too, when the law doesn't give a damn who gets caught beneath its wheels.
SUSANNE ALLEYN
Game of Patience
A nation that will not enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its people.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Industrial Discontent", The Shadow on the Dial and Other Essays
For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
The Laws
In all governments, there must of necessity be both the law and the sword; laws without arms would give us not liberty, but licentiousness; and arms without laws, would produce not subjection, but slavery. The law, therefore, should be unto the sword what the handle is to the hatchet; it should direct the stroke and temper the force.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges.
JO WALTON
Farthing
Laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
All of our punishment institutions, including jails, laws, church confessionals, and so forth, are systems of illusion. The order of the universe, the infinite justice of yin and yang, naturally takes care of all motion and compensation. We don't need to invent arbitrary ways to make balance with punishments.
MICHIO KUSHI
Spiritual Journey
LAW--rigid, definite, concise law--is the primary want of early mankind; that which they need above anything else, that which is requisite before they can gain anything else. But it is their greatest difficulty, as well as their first requisite; the thing most out of their reach, as well as that most beneficial to them if they reach it. In later ages many races have gained much of this discipline quickly, though painfully; a loose set of scattered clans has been often and often forced to substantial settlement by a rigid conqueror; the Romans did half the work for above half Europe. But where could the first ages find Romans or a conqueror? Men conquer by the power of government, and it was exactly government which then was not. The first ascent of civilization was at a steep gradient, though when now we look down upon it, it seems almost nothing.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Laws are not made like lime-twigs or nets, to catch everything that toucheth them; but rather like sea-marks, to guide from shipwreck the ignorant passenger.
PHILIP SIDNEY
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
CHARLES DICKENS
Nicholas Nickleby
When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838