Law quotes
9.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside law — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"The purpose of [a lawsuit] is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."
"It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers."
"I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution."
"Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine."
"Study men following the law of their higher nature, the law of love, so that when you grow to manhood, you will have improved your heritage."
"If non-violence is the Law of our being, the future is with Women."
"The more laws and restrictions there are, The poorer people become. The sharper men's weapons, The more trouble in the land."
"No thought, no action, no movement, total stillness: only thus can one manifest the true nature and law of things from within and unconsciously, and at last become one with heaven and earth."
"What the working man sells is not directly his Labor, but his Laboring Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Law, but certainly by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed to sell his laboring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer."
"Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy) Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism) Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism) Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic)"
"I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law."
"The proper exegetical principle is this: Mosaic law is still to be enforced, by the church or the State or both, unless there is a specific injunction to the contrary in the New Testament."
"American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them."
"No matter what eyewitness testimony is in the court of law, it is the lowest form of evidence in the court of science."
"The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow."
"That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty."
"Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results … We understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world—although its operation there is just as simple and undeviating— and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it."
"Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being."
"I was always unlawful; I broke the law when I was born because my parents weren't married."
"I don't like to think of laws as rules you have to follow, but more as suggestions."
