Quotes · Skopia

71 quotes

1848

★ 1.1

Statements, indictments, bills are circulated, shuffled between judges, prosecutors, the Attorney General, the Lord Chancellor’s office; each step in the process clear, logical, and designed to create corpses by due process of law.

Hilary Mantel

Bring Up the Bodies · 2012

★ 1.1

Speech · Political speech

Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father and to tear the character of his own and his children's liberty.

Abraham Lincoln

1838

★ 1.2

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 superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.

Abraham Lincoln

1850

★ 1.2

Novel

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

Jules Verne

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea · 1870

★ 1.2

Novel

The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself.

Charles Dickens

Bleak House · 1853

★ 1.3

Legal opinion · Legal writing

A long line of cases shows that it is not merely of some importance, but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.

Gordon Hewart

Rex v. Sussex Justices · 1924

★ 1.7

Essay

The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of "The Reasonable Man.".... He is an ideal, a standard, the embodiment of all those qualities which we demand of the good citizen.

A.P. Herbert

The Reasonable Man · 1935

★ 1.7

Legal writing

No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning. For every constitution, there is an epic, for each decalogue a scripture. Once understood in the context of the narratives that give it meaning, law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live.

Robert M. Cover

Nomos and Narrative · 1983

★ 1.7

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Schenck v. United States · 1919

★ 1.8

Treatise · Legal writing

Reason is the life of the law, nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason.

Edward Coke

1628

★ 1.9

Treatise · Legal writing

How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law.

Edward Coke

1628

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.

Daniel Webster

1835

★ 1.9

Does capital punishment tend to the security of the people? By no means. It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them; and it renders life insecure, inasmuch as the law holds out that property is of greater value than life.

Elizabeth Fry

1848

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

Carrie Chapman Catt

1900

★ 1.9

Play

Public opinion's always in advance of the law.

John Galsworthy

1922

★ 1.9

Historical literature

Anacharsis laughed at Solon for imagining the dishonesty and covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders' webs, and would catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but easily be broken by the mighty and rich.

Anacharsis

Plutarch's Lives · 119

★ 1.9

Wherever a knave is not punished, an honest man is laughed at.

George Savile, Lord Halifax

1750

★ 1.9

For you'll ne'er mend your fortunes, nor help the just cause, By breaking of windows, or breaking of laws.

Hannah More

1817

★ 1.9

Magazine

Laws were made to be broken.

Christopher North

1830

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

Herbert Hoover

Inaugural Address of Herbert Hoover · 1929

★ 1.9

Novel · Detective fiction

Law is where you buy it in this town.

Raymond Chandler

Farewell, My Lovely · 1940

★ 1.9

Historical literature

There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from custom is the unwritten law.

Diogenes Laertius

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers · 240

★ 2.0

Essay · Philosophical literature

Laws are like Cobwebs, which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through.

Jonathan Swift

1711

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Edmund Burke

Speech at the Bristol Guildhall, September 6, 1780 · 1780

★ 2.0

Essay · Political literature

Every law is contrary to liberty.

Jeremy Bentham

1832

★ 2.0

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

Mark Twain

1906

★ 2.0

Film · Film noir · Crime drama (film) · Crime drama

It's a dirty job, enforcing the law; but, it's what we're supposed to be doing, isn't it?

Mike Vargas

Touch of Evil · 1958

★ 2.0

Presocratic fragment · Fragment · Philosophical literature

The people must fight in defense of the law as they would for their city wall.

Heraclitus

★ 2.0

Play · Comedy (play)

We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch and not their terror.

William Shakespeare

Measure for Measure · 1616

★ 2.1

Political literature

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

John Milton

Areopagitica · 1644

★ 2.1

Speech

Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Ethical Demands for Integration · 1962

★ 2.1

Essay · Philosophical literature

A law that is not just does not seem to me to be a law.

St. Augustine

389

★ 2.2

Speech · Political speech

The intention of the lawgiver is the law.

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 2.3

The Law is the killy-loo bird of the sciences. The killy-loo, of course, was the bird that insisted on flying backward because it didn't care where it was going but was mightily interested in where it had been... Only The Law, inexorably devoted to all its most ancient principles and precedents, makes a vice of innovation and a virtue of hoariness.

Fred Rodell

1939

★ 3.4

Essay · Political literature

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in.

William Shenstone

1764

★ 3.5

Play

The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely.

Robert Bolt

1960

★ 3.5

They cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate, for they have no souls.

Edward Coke

1658

★ 3.5

Speech · Political speech

There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity, — the Law of Nature and of Nations.

Edmund Burke

1794

★ 3.5

Open letter · Letter

The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.

Edmund Burke

1796

★ 3.5

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