Law

"That law should be as invariable in the mental and moral worlds as in the physical is to be expected, since the universe is the emanation of the One, and what we call Law is but the expression of the Divine Nature. As there is one Lite emanating all, so there is one Law sustaining all ; the worlds rest on this rock of the Divine Nature as on a secure, immutable foundation. p.7"

"To offend, and judge, are distinct offices And of opposed natures."

"He it was that first gave to the law the air of a science. He found it a skeleton, and clothed it with life, colour, and complexion; he embraced the cold statue, and by his touch it grew into youth, health, and beauty."

"Press not a falling man too far! 'tis virtue: His faults lie open to the laws; let them, Not you, correct him."

"When law can do no right, Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong."

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

"The quest for other, and better, forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actually elsewhere; but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on earth."

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

"'Tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave me nothing for 't."

"But, I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king? and resolution thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the law?"

"Faith, I have been a truant in the law, And never yet could frame my will to it; And therefore frame the law unto my will."

"Bold of your worthiness, we single you As our best-moving fair solicitor."

"You would oppose law to socialism. But it is the law which socialism invokes. It aspires to legal, not extra-legal plunder…. You wish to prevent it from taking any part in the making of laws. You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace. In this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal plunder is the basis of the legislation within. It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be determined, and there are only three solutions of it:— 1. When the few plunder the many. 2. When everybody plunders everybody else. 3. When nobody plunders anybody. Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results. Partial plunder.—This is the system which prevailed so long as the elective privilege was partial; a system which is resorted to, to avoid the invasion of socialism. Universal plunder.—We have been threatened by this system when the elective privilege has become universal; the masses having conceived the idea of making law, on the principle of legislators who had preceded them. Absence of plunder.—This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, conciliation, and of good sense."

"Any law that takes hold of a man's daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life."

"But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw."

"You who wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of audience."

"He hath resisted law, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial Than the severity of the public power."

"Corporations have no internal constraints to stop them from flouting the law. Their legal makeup compels them to pursue profit and growth but say nothing about whether they have to abide by the law in doing so. As a result, decisions to break the law depend, as do all others, on whether the benefits outweigh the costs."

"La loi est bonne, elle est nécessaire, l'exécution en est mauvaise, et les mœurs jugent les lois d'après la manière dont elles s'exécutent."

"Quædam iura non scripta, sed omnibus scriptis certiora sunt."

"In the corrupted currents of this world, Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice; And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence."

"When laws, customs, or institutions cease to be beneficial to man, they cease to be obligatory."

"Necessity creates the law, — it supersedes rules; and whatever is reasonable and just in such cases is likewise legal."

"But is this law? Ay, marry is 't; crowner's quest law."

"We have strict statutes and most biting laws."

"Lorsque la Spoliation est devenue le moyen d’existence d’une agglomération d’hommes unis entre eux par le lien social, ils se font bientôt une loi qui la sanctionne, une morale qui la glorifie."

"In the first place, it is not improper to observe, that the law of cases of necessity is not likely to be well furnished with precise rules; necessity creates the law, it supersedes rules; and whatever is reasonable and just in such cases, is likewise legal; it is not to be considered as matter of surprise, therefore, if much instituted rule is not to be found on such subjects."

"The inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from adapting themselves to circumstances, may, in certain cases, render them disastrous, and make them bring about, at a time of crisis, the ruin of the State."

"We must base our laws on faith, not reason."

"Surely we will not dare say that these laws are unjust, or rather, that they are not laws at all. For it seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all."

"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that 'if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression', human rights should be protected by the rule of law. That just laws which uphold human rights are the necessary foundation of peace and security would be denied only by closed minds which interpret peace as the silence of all opposition and security as the assurance of their own power."

"Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void - is, in fact, not a law."

"Things don't just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don't live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be."

"The man who more than any other, save Lincoln, had changed us into a nation whose citizens were all freemen, realized entirely that these freemen would remain free only while they kept mastery over their own evil passions. He saw that lawlessness in all its forms was the handmaiden of tyranny. No nation ever yet retained its freedom for any length of time after losing its respect for the law, after losing the law-abiding spirit, the spirit that really makes orderly liberty."

"The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization. There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit here at home, if we are permanently to succeed; and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad."

"To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful."

"Law is order, and good law is good order."

"All those which have written of laws, have written either as philosophers or as lawyers, and none as statesmen. As for the philosophers, they make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths; and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high. For the lawyers, they write according to the states where they live what is received law, and not what ought to be law: for the wisdom of a lawmaker is one, and of a lawyer is another."

"For my part, I never knew a social evil to be removed by force of law...The prevention of that social evil must commence in the nursery. If you will bring up woman as you ought to bring up men—not as you do bring up men—acknowledging her right to live the same as men, giving her the same advantages and the same rights that men have, there will be no need to enact laws against a "social evil…I say to the Legislature that, if you enact laws against social evils, whatever those laws are, let them be alike for man and for woman."

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

"…laws should always embody justice, otherwise justice becomes what laws arbitrarily decide it to be. And, as the Tai Ji Men case shows all too well after 29 years, and in this special year 2025, laws can sometimes be unjust."

"Aurum lex sequitur."

"As Bob Dylan forgot to say, "To live outside the law, you must be lucky.""

"It was a thing not to be done suddenly nor at one Parliament; nor scarce a whole year would suffice, to purge the statute-book nor lessen the volume of laws;-being so many in number that neither common people can half practise them, nor the lawyer sufficiently understand them."

"The Invariability of Law. That we live in a realm of law, that we arc surrounded by laws that we cannot break, this is a truism. Yet when the fact is recognised in a real and vital way, and when it is seen to be a fact in the mental and moral world as much as in the physical, a certain sense of helplessness is apt to overpower us, as though we felt ourselves in the grip of some mighty Power, that, seizing us, whirls us away whither it will. The very reverse of this is in reality the case, for the mighty Power, when it is understood, will obediently carry us whither we will; all forces in Nature can be used in proportion as they are understood “Nature is conquered by obedience ” — and her resistless energies are at our bidding as soon as we, by knowledge, work with them and not against them. We can choose out of her boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in momentum, in direction, and so on, and their very invariability becomes the guarantee of our success. p. 6"

"Generally when scholars talk about the relationship between history, memory, and law, the latter is thought of solely as a passive object of historical change. Legal history is regarded as the study of the forces that have shaped law. It is the history of the evolution of law with law perpetually lagging behind society and being pushed and pulled from the outside. This view, as rich and productive as it is, ignores what might be called an “internal” perspective, one that would examine law for the way it uses and writes history as well as for the ways in which it also become a site of memory and commemoration."

"Laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law."

"The writers of our belief system caution us to make sure that the laws are just — that is, that they are not subverted by those in power for their own interest and permitted to become the means by which the powerful justify their rule and become masters of the many. In such conditions the laws become idols, and we end up worshipping false gods."

"Law is a Bottomless-Pit, it is a Cormorant, a Harpy, that devours every thing."

"Your pettifoggers damn their souls, To share with knaves in cheating fools."