quotations about law
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
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Tainted Justice
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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
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He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
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I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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Laws like to Cobwebs catch small Flies, Great ones break thro' before your eyes.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1734
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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For he that is delighted by concord,
And who abideth in the Law,
Falleth not from Security.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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If we look to the historical influences which have actually enacted human codes, and which have governed their administration, it is at first difficult to understand the sanctity which is thus attributed to the law and its ministers. And if, further, we examine the contents of human codes, and observe how far short they fall of enforcing, even within the limits that must bound all attempts at such enforcement, anything like an absolute morality, this difficulty is not diminished. Between law and equity there is, perhaps there must always be, a considerable interval. Between law and absolute morality there is at times patent contradiction. The undue protection of class interests, the neglect of interests of large classes; the legislation which consults, chiefly and above all else, the profit of the legislator, whether he be king, or noble, or popular assembly; the legislation which postpones moral to material interests, and which makes havoc of man's highest good in order to gratify his lower instincts, his passing caprice, his unreasoning passion -- all this and much else appears to forbid enthusiasm for human law.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
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