Law quotes
9.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside law — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"So swift, silent and furtive were his movements like those of a trained bloodhound picking out a scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defense. -Dr. Watson, The Sign of the Four"
"It's not just the over $8 billion that we would be saving in law enforcement; it's also the over $8 billion that we would be making by taxing marijuana... We are filling our jails with nonviolent drug offenders - predominantly young, predominantly African American... It's a great beyond left and right issue. It has support across the political spectrum and also the support of the majority of the American people."
"To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust."
"One law for the lion and ox is oppression."
"There is a law in each well-ordered nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory."
"The worst thing we can do is to assume that the Electoral College [voting] resulting in the election of Donald Trump represents a mandate. It does not. He did not get the majority of the popular vote; that went to Hillary Clinton. That means those votes represent the consciousness of the nation, which is that abortion should be legal, that contraception and family planning are health issues and prevention, that a woman's right to reproductive privacy is the law of the land and should remain such."
"It's harder to confess the sin that no one believes in Than the crime that everyone can appreciate. For the crime is in relation to the law And the sin is in relation to the sinner."
"The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things as your law has to tell."
"The Law is not in fault, but our evil and wicked nature; even as a heap of lime is still and quiet until water is poured on it, but then it begins to smoke and burn, not from the fault of the water, but from the nature of the lime, which will not endure it."
"Human law cannot punish or forbid all evil, since while doing away with evils it would do away with many good things, which would hinder the advance of the common good."
"The same divine authority that forbids the killing of a human being establishes certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time."
"According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it, knowing it and making use of it, but realizing our own selves in it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union."
"Kill me if you will, I am not afraid to die; and I have endured so much oppression that I am weary of life. But I am a strong man, and I could cast both of you down, if I would. If you have any legal process to serve, present it, for I am at all times subject to law and shall not offer resistance."
"Do not be bewildered by the surfaces: in the depths all becomes law."
"Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment."
"Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first- born of the world are the competitors."
"All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation."
"As many opinions as there are men; each a law to himself."
"This is a general law of the universe, overlooked by science, that out of complexity emerges greater complexity. We could almost say that the universe, nature, is a novelty-conserving, or complexity-conserving engine."
"I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one."
