Famously Said Random quote

Topics/Government

Quotes about laws

126 quotes from 83 people

Most readBy personPage 6 of 9

Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956The American Mercury (May 1930)
- Government
“Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
Ayn Rand1905–1982“Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,” The Objectivist Newsletter (February 1962) p. 1
- Economics
A decrease in the quantity of legislation generally means an increase in the quality of life.
George Willborn 1941Column, December 23, 2007, “The Gift Of Doing Very Little” at washingtonpost.com.
- Government
In university they don’t tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
Doris Lessing1919–2013Martha Quest (1952), Part III, ch. 2
- Education
There’s reason good, that you good laws should make:
Men’s manners ne’er were viler, for your sake.
Ben Jonson1572–1637Epigrams (1616), XXIV: To the Parliament
- Clever Jabs
Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils.
Jeremy Bentham1748–1832Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X: Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society
- Government
- Liberty
Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
Booker T. Washington1856–1915“The Problems of the Colored Race in the South,” lecture, Hamilton Club, Chicago (10 December 1895)
- Voting
Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
Alexis de Tocqueville1805–1859Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XVI.
A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.
Primo Levi1919–1987If This Is a Man (1947)
- Power
If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.
John Adams1735–1826A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787-88), vol. 3, ch. 1
- Morality
I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Speech at New Haven, Connecticut (6 March 1860)
- Money
As there can be no second class citizens before the law of America, so⁠—we believe⁠—there can be no second-class nations before the law of the world community.
Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)
- Justice
An unjust law is itself a species of violence.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Non-Violence in Peace & War (1962) Vol. 2, edited by Mahadev Haribhai Desai, p. 144
- Justice
Mandela demonstrated that action and ideas are not enough. No matter how right, they must be chiseled into law and institutions.
Barack Obamaborn 1961Eulogy of Nelson Mandela (December 2013)
- Ideas
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis on the observance of the law than they do on its enforcement.
Calvin Coolidge1872–1933Address before the Women’s National Committee for Law Enforcement; as quoted in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 87 (1933)