"Nature is good, but intellect is better, as the law-giver is before the law-receiver."
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Law
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Law quotes (page 51 of 467)
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"It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship."
"To embarrass justice by multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, seem to be the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage."
"A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law."
"Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."
"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills."
"The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection."
"Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes."
"There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul."
"Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist."
"My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels."
"A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws."
"... I have developed, over the years, some sense of the difference between real horseshit that you can step in and Ideal Platonic Horseshit that exists, evidently, only in the contemplation of those who worship such abstractions; and I continue to notice that Natural Law bears an uncanny resemblance to ideal Platonic Horseshit."
"It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm."
"Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing... then it will be done, but not until then."
"Live the law of love. We encourage obedience to the laws of life when we live the laws of love."
"The initial configuration of the universe may have been chosen by God, or it may itself have been determined by the laws of science. In either case, it would seem that everything in the universe would then be determined by evolution according to the laws of science, so it is difficult to see how we can be masters of our fate."
"If any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship concerning their common peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny or rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write that there should be no commanders or officers because all are equal in Christ, therefore no master or officers, no laws nor orders, nor corrections nor punishments - I say I never denied that in such cases, the commander may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits."
"We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey."
"Pretty much all law consists in forbidding men to do something that they want to do."