The quotations of

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist

1667–1745

36 quotes, most often on Clever Jabs, Laws and Comedy. Part of the Writers collection.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
- Laws
You have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Chapter VIIn context
There was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter VIn context
It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter VIn context
- Justice
- Laws
They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning
Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput, Chapter VIIn context
- Laws
- Truth & Lies

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