Bertolt Brecht on laws

If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.

Always the victor writes the history of the vanquished. He who beats distorts the faces of the beaten. The weaker depart from this world and the lies remain.

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. (Weil die Dinge sind, wie sie sind, werden die Dinge nicht so bleiben wie sie sind.)

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Robert Frost1874–1963

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

Plato429–349 BC

• Morality