Law Quotes

• Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Block, Order, Justice

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2011). “Why We Can't Wait”, p.62, Beacon Press

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• Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law.

  Aristotle

  Ideas, Justice, Equity

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1833). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.91

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• I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government... And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

  Susan B. Anthony

  Men, Rebel, Dollars

  An account of the proceedings on the trial of Susan B. Anthony on the charge of illegal voting at the Presidential election in Nov., 1872, and on the trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh and William B. Hall, the inspectors of elections by whom her vote was received, 1874.

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• When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Government, Liberty, Citizens

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.10, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• The Constitution is the origin and measure of legislative authority. It says to legislators, thus far ye shall go and no farther. Not a particle of it should be shaken; not a pebble of it should be removed.

  William Paterson

  Political, Measurement, Pebbles

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• There can be no peace without law.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Humanity, Peacemaking

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• The more laws, the less justice.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Peace, War, Justice

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• The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Life, Mean, Everyday

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• No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Respect, Freedom, Equality

  Third Annual Message to Congress, 7 Dec. 1903. "No one is above the law" appears in the U.S. Supreme Court case Mississippi v. Johnson (1867) (arguments of counsel). Even earlier, "no officer ... is above the law" is found in a Kentucky Supreme Court case, Johnston v. Commonwealth (1809).

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• Laws are important. But they can only be effective if the people know about the particular laws.

  Waris Dirie

  People, Important, Particular

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• Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.

  Robert Kennedy

  Freedom, Men, Hands

  Robert F. Kennedy (1964). “Rights for Americans: the speeches of Robert F. Kennedy”

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• Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Courage, Government, Hands

  "The Authority Principle" in Daniel Guerin "No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism" (p. 90), 1980.

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• Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

  Plato

  Wise, Wisdom, Witty

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• If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

  Winston Churchill

  Respect, Not Giving Up, Political

  "Churchill By Himself".

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• Ignorance of the law excuses no man.

  John Selden

  Ignorance, Men, Excuse

  Table-Talk "Law" (1689) See Proverbs 153

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• Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Tyrants, Inalienable Rights, Equal Rights

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.224, Cambridge University Press

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• There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.

  Edmund Burke

  Wisdom, Equality, Justice

  Speech, 28 May 1794, in E. A. Bond (ed.) 'Speeches...in the Trial of Warren Hastings' (1859) vol. 4, p. 377

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• A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Lawyer, Valuable

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.112

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• He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Believe, Positive Thinking

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• We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.

  William Sloane Coffin

  Force

  William Sloane Coffin “Letters to a Young Doubter”, Westminster John Knox Press

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• For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Powerful, Men

  "Radio and Television Report to the Nation on the Situation at the University of Mississippi". September 30, 1962.

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• In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

  Samuel Butler

  Inspiration, Feet, Certain

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• Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap - let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primmers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mother, Book, School

  Abraham Lincoln (2009). “The Portable Abraham Lincoln”, p.35, Penguin

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• If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Motivational, Religious, Freedom

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Savio 1

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• Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.

  Jean Anouilh

  Carpe Diem, Political, Sacred

  Jan Austell, Jean Anouilh, Jean Giraudoux, Bernard Shaw, Thornton Wilder (1971). “The play as theater”

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