Quotes · Skopia

71 quotes

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Topic·Law✕clear

Treatise · Political literature

Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 7.2

Essay · Newspaper

A government of laws, and not of men.

1775

★ 7.2

The law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women.

Catharine MacKinnon

1983

★ 6.1

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.

Charles Macklin

Love a la Mode · 1759

★ 5.3

I fought the law, and the law won.

I Fought the Law · 1961

★ 5.3

The law must be stable, and yet it cannot stand still.

1921

★ 5.2

The law may... Depend on what the judge has had for breakfast.

Robert Maynard Hutchins

1933

★ 5.2

Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him.

Table Talk (Selden) · 1689

★ 5.1

The truth is, that the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

1880

★ 5.1

Speech · Political speech

Laws are silent in time of war.

Pro Milone · 52 BC

★ 4.8

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 4.7

It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

1897

★ 4.3

Sermon · Religious literature

Whoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written, or spoken laws; it is He, who is truly the Law-giver to all intents and purposes, and not the Person who first wrote, or spoke them.

Benjamin Hoadly

1717

★ 4.2

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 4.0

Necessity knows no law.

The Innocents Abroad · 1869

★ 4.0

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

Open letter · Letter · Political literature

There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail · 1963

★ 3.9

Speech · Political speech

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

Ulysses S. Grant

First Inaugural Address of Ulysses S. Grant · 1869

★ 3.8

Essay · Philosophical literature

Integrity has no need of rules.

The Myth of Sisyphus · 1942

★ 3.8

Historical literature

Written laws are like spiders' webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives

★ 3.8

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