Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on laws

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.

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