Law

"Existing criminology is insufficient to isolate barbarism. It is insufficient because the idea of "crime" in existing criminology is artificial, for what is called crime is really an infringement of "existing laws", whereas "laws" are very often a manifestation of barbarism and violence. Such are the prohibiting laws of different kinds which abound in modern life. The number of these laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. On the other hand, unquestionable crimes escape the field of vision of criminology, either because they have not recognized the form of crime or because they surpass a certain scale. In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently what is often regarded as "political" activity is in fact a criminal activity."

"No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels."

"LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones."

"LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage."

"Val més mala avinença que bona sentencia. (Catalan)"

"Kratka sprava je bolši kakor dolga pravda. (Croatian)"

"Krátké porovnání lepŝí, než dlouhé sporování. (Czech)"

"Expedit reipublicie ut sit finis litium: It is for the public good that there be an end of litigation."

"Debet estefinit litium: There ought to be an end of law suits."

"Englishmen may have been law-abiding, but they have not been unlitigious."

"Though every attempt to shorten litigation is entitled to the favour of the Court,1 yet before we stop a party in a regular course of proceeding, we ought to be certain that we shall not deprive him of that justice which the law authorizes him to seek."

"When the motto for the year 2001 is "Innovation Followed by Litigation" you know who the biggest winners are - the lawyers."

"The law is too tenacious of private peace, to suffer litigations to be negotiable."

"No wonder lawyers, who control the legal system, have fought so hard, and with great success, against "no fault" insurance. No fault, no lawsuits. No lawsuits, no lunch."

"As one gets older, litigation replaces sex."

"Proceedings at law are sufficiently expensive."

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser — in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough. Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it."

""Lawsuit mania"… a continual craving to go to law against others, while considering themselves the injured party."

"O Spirit of litigation, know, When we keep silent in this season, The stem of multiple lilies grew Too large to be contained by reason"

"Sometimes nonsensical lawsuits are generated by lawyers. In this country (the United States everybody sues everybody."

"Today the courts are choked with lawsuits brought by people against the New King. When they sue each other as a result of an automobile accident they in fact sue the King, for both parties are likely insured. ... Steadily the courts have become clearing-houses for the insurance industry."

"A piece of paper blown by the wind among lawyers must in the end be drawn out again by two oxen."

"Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess."

"Krátka správa lepšia ako dlhá pravda. (Slovak)"

"A l'è mej un cativ accordi ch'una bona sentessa. (Piedmontese)"

"Officium officialium, quorum te numero aggregasti, hodie est, jura confundere, suscitare lites, transactiones rescindere, innectere dilationes, suprimere veritatem, fovere mendacium, quaestum sequi, aeqitatem vendere, inhiare exactionibus, versutias concinnare."

"Khudoi mir luchshe dobroy ssory. (Russian)"

"Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors."

"Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers."

"The matter of jurisprudence is positive law: law, simply and strictly so called : or law set by political superiors to political inferiors."

"Every positive law, or every law simply and strictly so called, is set, directly or circuitously, by a sovereign person or body, to a member or members of the independent political society wherein that person or body is supreme."

"Positive laws deriving their force from the law of nature, by which we are directed to make occasional rules, which we call laws, according to the exigencies of times, places, and persons, grow obsolete, or cease to be, as soon as they cease to be necessary."

"It is manifestly fallacious to make the opening of counsel the test on the question of what is "the act or transaction which the Crown prosecutes." It is plain that the Court is not at all bound by the statements made by the counsel in his address."

"What is introductory goes for nothing, but it is in order to explain the evidence."

"If Mr. Attorney in opening does say anything that he ought not to eay, I will correct him, as I would do anybody that does not open things right as they are proved; but pray don't you that are at the bar interrupt one another, it is unbecoming men of your profession to be chopping in and snapping at one another. Go on, Mr. Attorney."

"Do not open that which is not evidence."

"This case not having been opened has thrown a difficulty upon the Court—without presuming to say it ought not to have been the course, considering the state of the matter; I am thinking of the inconvenient situation in which the Court is placed. Parties, I think, should act upon the law as it stands. The usual course is for the counsel for the prosecution to state the facts without reasoning upon them, and such facts as may lead one's attention to that which may be the real question of law in the case. But if a contrary course is to be adopted, and an opening is to be done without, we shall be in great difficulty at the end of the cause."

"That is the great difficulty in not having an opening speech. If there is a speech without any observations, I think it beneficial."

"Utopias are invented to be realized, and as long as there is no demand for an improvement of living conditions, changing things is impossible."

"Well, you know, Star Trek and the Starship Enterprise was supposed to be a metaphor for Starship Earth. It was supposed to be an idealized representation of what our society should be. In our society, we have a lot of minorities. Asians, African-Americans, women getting on the upward mobility escalator. They're making progress going up, whether it's in the professional world or the business world, or in other various careers. But the problem seems to be that think called the glass ceiling. They make it up to a certain point and then it stops. I kept lobbying to the powers that be at Paramount saying to them, "if Starfleet is to represent that ideal, you just can't keep giving us advances in rank." By that time I was a Commander. The movie before that I was a Lieutenant Commander, but I was still there at the helm punching those same buttons. I said to them, "it's very important that if we are supposed to be that kind of bright, eminently capable people...professionals....we have to get that advancement. We have to be able to show that this idealized society truly works. It's very important than, that we see one of the characters moving up and becoming a captain. Of course, my character being Sulu, I lobbied most vigorously for him. Finally after 25 long years of lobbying, we were able to reach that idealized representation of Starfleet. The glass ceiling doesn't exist with Starfleet. He was a captain then."

"In both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, utopias were advanced, compromised by reality, and then implemented as mass murder: in autumn 1932 by Stalin, and autumn 1941 by Hitler. Stalin’s utopia was to collectivize the Soviet Union in nine to twelve weeks; Hitler’s was to conquer the Soviet Union in the same span of time. Each of these seems, in retrospect, to be horrendously impractical. Yet each of them was implemented, under the cover of a big lie, even after failure was obvious. Dead human beings provided retrospective arguments for the rectitude of policy. Hitler and Stalin thus shared a certain politics of tyranny: they brought about catastrophes, blamed the enemy of their choice, and then used the death of millions to make the case that their policies were necessary or desirable. Each of them had a transformative utopia, a group to be blamed when its realization proved impossible, and then a policy of mass murder that could be proclaimed as a kind of ersatz victory."

"Popper believed that any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed owing to the fact that it chokes its own refutations. The simple notion of a good society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian. I learned from Popper, in addition to the difference between an open and a closed society, that between an open and a closed mind."

"No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy."

"In general, utopia has a positive meaning as a unit that represents an ideal human society, a normative social ideal (regulative idea) of perfect quality. Utopias approach the moral, social ideal of particular societies o global vision of justice. Every society necessarily presents certain notions of social good, which only proves the existence of utopianism as a universal idea for all cultures that have certain written or unwritten rules."

"The world has become too dangerous for anything less than utopias."

"The New Earth Is No Utopia... All utopian visions have this in common: the mental projection of a future time when all will be well, we will be saved, there will be peace and harmony and the end of our problems. There have been many such utopian visions. Some ended in disappointment, others in disaster. At the core of all utopian visions lies one of the main structural dysfunctions of the old consciousness: looking to the future for salvation. The only existence the future actually has is as a thought form in your mind, so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form, and that is ego. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” writes the biblical prophet. The foundation for a new earth is a new heaven – the awakened consciousness. The earth – external reality – is only its outer reflection. The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free... only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening. Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence. So the new heaven, the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising... at this moment..."

"We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian."

"Utopia is work that issues from pain: it is what we do not have that we crave."

"... the asymmetry in ease of realization [of suffering vs. happiness] suggests that it is more cost-effective (for a wide variety of value systems) to work to avoid dystopian outcomes than to create utopian ones."

"Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably."