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.
"There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it."
"Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell."
"And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends."
"Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir."
"To offend and judge are distinct offices, And of opposed natures."
"The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept."
"I am of opinion that it is highly requisite forthwith to pass a law, prohibiting upon great penalties all trade with our enemies, and more especially the supplying of them with arms, ammunition or provisions of any kind whatsoever."
"I still got a lot of grudges, it's high time we take out some judges."
"What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind."
"as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities. Nobody else in the world can do it, or ever could do it, or ever will be able to do it again."
"Whoever is open, loyal, true; of humane and affable demeanour; honourable himself, and in his judgement of others; faithful to his word as to law, and faithful alike to God and man....such a man is a true gentleman."
"Everything in nature goes by law, and not by luck."
"A strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will."
"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."
"The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all."
"He in whom the love of truth predominates . . . submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion; but he is a candidate for truth . . . and respects the highest law of his being."
"Laws must never be made compatible with crimes, no more than lying should be in harmony with the truth."
"How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."
"It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief."
"We should not have drug laws or a court system that disproportionately punishes the black community."
