University Of Oxford Alumni

"Astronomy is probably the oldest of all the sciences. It differs from virtually all other science disciplines in that it is not possible to carry out experimental tests in the laboratory."

"[When he saw animals being conveyed to his kitchen] Poor little innocent creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could speak, how you would curse us! For we are the cause of your death, and what have you done to deserve it?"

"Any man who spends his income, whether large or small, benefits the community by putting money in circulation."

"I must look at the decision with reference to all the circumstances which led to it."

"I wish to uphold counsel in the exercise of their discretion."

"It is impossible for us English lawyers, dealing with the English language, to express our views except in the technical language of our law."

"I have said frequently, and I repeat it, that there is no Judge on the bench who is more willing to allow amendments, even at the last moment, than I, provided there is no surprise."

"Born and bred, so to say, in Chancery, I have a strong leaning towards the rule of the Court of Chancery, of requiring full discovery."

"Masterly inactivity may be prudence to one man, desperate rashness to another."

"A decision of the House of Lords requires no sanction."

"I am always afraid of quoting my own decisions; I do not think it is the right thing for a judge to do, but I often do refer to them when I can thereby avoid repeating in different words what I have said before."

"The difficulty which I feel as a Judge, and always felt at the Bar, is this: a defendant is entitled to put his back against the wall and to fight from every available point of advantage."

"Motives do not concern me; they are a dangerous subject with which to deal."

"It is the right of her Majesty's subjects to make claims and to have them tried in the constitutional way."

"I think that the proper and safe course is to follow a decision of a Court of co-ordinate jurisdiction, unless some cogent reason is given to the contrary."

"This seems to me to be one of those cases in which the Court is bound to arrive at a conclusion without having any satisfactory means of arriving at it. The only guide I have is this. I am entitled to sit in the testator's chair as he wrote his own will."

"It is to my mind much to be regretted, and it is a regret which I believe every Judge on the bench shares, that text-books are more and more quoted in Court—I mean, of course, text-books by living authors—and some Judges have gone so far as to say that they shall not be quoted."

"Public policy does not admit of definition and is not easily explained. It is a variable quantity; it must vary and does vary with the habits, capacities, and opportunities of the public."

"At Rome all men paid homage to libertas, holding it to be something roughly equivalent to the spirit and practice of Republican government. Exactly what corresponded to the Republican constitution was, however, a matter not of legal definition but of partisan interpretation. Libertas is a vague and negative notion—freedom from the rule of a tyrant or a faction. It follows libertas [liberty], like regnum [kingship] or dominatio [despotism], is a convenient term of political fraud."

"The political cant of a country is naturally and always most strongly in evidence on the side of the vested interests. In times of peace and prosperity it commands a wide measure of acquiescence, even of belief. Revolution rends the veil."

"The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the Commonwealth."

"Security and aggression are terms of partisan interpretation."

"In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade; and Roman history, Republican or Imperial, is the history of the governing class. The marshals, diplomats, and financiers of the Revolution may be discerned again in the Republic of Augustus as the ministers and agents of power, the same men but in different garb. They are the government of the New State."

"Without a party a statesman is nothing. He sometimes forgets that awkward fact."

"Decisions in the American Courts are entitled to great respect, but are not binding here; and there are many circumstances affecting questions arising between the laws of different States which may or may not be applicable to questions arising here."

"I do not think I can pass over the distinct words of Sir George Jessel, who knew practice as thoroughly as any Judge who ever sat on the bench."

"Experience tells us that sometimes, when minorities insist on their rights, they ultimately prevail."

"As Hayek wrote, the role that Edwin Cannan has played in the transmission and development of liberalism is little known. The school of liberal thought he established at the London School of Economics has proven lasting and influential across disciplines. According to economic historian Henry Spiegel, Cannan was “the leading student of classical economics in the England of his time.” Murray Rothbard, who was an excellent historian of economic theory, had a very high opinion of Cannan’s work. Leading contemporary economic historian Denis O’Brien writes that “Cannan’s strong critical attitude and wide scholarship are of great value to economists.”"

"Edwin Cannan significantly influenced Hayek and many other economists, although, as Hayek noted, the “part he played is little known beyond a rather narrow circle.” Hayek held that Cannan—together with Mises in Vienna and Frank Knight in Chicago—was responsible for the preservation and transmission of classical liberalism during the early decades of the twentieth century."

"There are here two assumptions about 'evaluations ', which I will call assumption (1) and assumption (2). Assumption (1) is that some individual may, without logical error, base his beliefs about matters of value entirely on premises which no one else would recognise as giving any evidence at all. Assumption (2) is that, given the kind of statement which other people regard as evidence for an evaluative conclusion, he may refuse to draw the conclusion because this does not count as evidence for him."

"Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns."

"In Poland it [the fall of Communism] took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!"

"We will be asked how, on our theory, justice can be a virtue and injustice a vice, since it will surely be difficult to show that any man whatsoever must need to be just as he needs the use of his hands and eyes, or needs prudence, courage and temperance? Before answering this question I shall argue that if it cannot be answered then justice can no longer be recommended as a virtue."

"Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are."

"It may seem that the only way to make a necessary connexion between 'injury' and the things that are to be avoided, is to say that it is only used in an 'action-guiding sense' when applied to something the speaker intends to avoid. But we should look carefully at the crucial move in that argument, and query the suggestion that someone might happen not to want anything for which he would need the use of hands or eyes. Hands and eyes, like ears and legs, play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to need them if he had no wants at all."

"The whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations. … If a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. With evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based."

"Courts do not exist for the sake of discipline, but for the sake of deciding matters in controversy."

"When I hear of an ‘equity’ in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room—looking for a black hat—which isn’t there."

"The rain, it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella: But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just’s umbrella."

"We must take the thing in the grip of our hands."

"If no appeal were possible, I have no great hesitation in saying that this would not be a desirable country to live in. . . . It is quite true that there is enough difficulty in appealing as it is; but if there is to be no appeal at all possible the system would be intolerable."

"The director is really a watch-dog, and the watch-dog has no right without the knowledge of his master to take a sop from a possible wolf."

". . . The fallacious use of the principle that you cannot look into a man's mind. It is said you cannot do that: therefore what follows? It is said that you are to have fixed rules to tell you that he must have meant something, one way or the other, when certain exterior phenomena arise. The answer is that there is no such thing as an absolute criterion which gives you certain index to a man's mind. There is nothing outside his mind which is an absolute indication of what is going on inside. So far from saying that you cannot look into a man's mind, you must look into it, if you are going to find fraud against him: and unless you think you see what must have been in his mind, you cannot find him guilty of fraud."

"An honest blunder in the use of the language is not dishonest... What is honest is not dishonest."

"The duty to prosecute, or not to prosecute, is a social and not a legal duty, which depends on the circumstances of each case. It cannot be said that it is a moral duty to prosecute in all cases. The matter depends on considerations, which vary according to each case. But the person who has to act is bound morally to be influenced by no indirect motive. He is morally bound to bring a fair and honest mind to the consideration and to exercise his decision from a sense of duty to himself and others."

"People must not be wiser than the experience of mankind."

"Judges, like Caesar's wife, should be above suspicion."

"The only case in which I can conceive a person having breakfast over night is that he is not likely to have it next morning."

"At common law, the Attorney-General is, when he is exercising his functions as an officer of the Crown, in no case that I know of a Court in the ordinary sense."

"Like my brothers who sit with me, I am extremely reluctant to decide anything except what is necessary for the special case, because I believe by long experience that judgments come with far more weight and gravity when they come upon points which the Judges are bound to decide, and I believe that obiter dicta, like the proverbial chickens of destiny, come home to roost sooner or later in a very uncomfortable way to the Judges who have uttered them, and are a great source of embarrassment in future cases. Therefore I abstain from putting a construction on more than it is necessary to do for this particular case."