Sourced and curated.

1880

★ 5.1

Laws are silent in time of war.

Cicero

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.

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.

1897

★ 4.3

Sermon · Religious literature

Benjamin Hoadly

1717

★ 4.2

Political literature · Philosophical literature

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

Aristotle

Politics · 350 BC

★ 4.0

Travel writing

Necessity knows no law.

Mark Twain

The Innocents Abroad · 1869

★ 4.0

Travel writing

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

Mark Twain

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

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.

Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus · 1942

★ 3.8

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.

Anacharsis

Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives

★ 3.8

Legal writing

No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Magna Carta

1215

★ 3.7

Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.

Edward Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · 1776

★ 3.7

Lecture

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.

Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.

The Common Law · 1880

★ 3.7

George Savile, Lord Halifax

1750

★ 3.6

Political literature

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

1760

★ 3.6

Poem

Oliver Goldsmith

1764

★ 3.6

Treatise · Legal writing

All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

William Blackstone

Commentaries on the Laws of England · 1769

★ 3.6

The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.

Samuel Johnson

1784

★ 3.6

Novel

The majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France

1894

★ 3.6

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

Edward Coke

1658

★ 3.5

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.

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.

1794

★ 3.5

Open letter · Letter

There are two sorts of laws, those of absolute equity and universality, and the bizarre ones which owe their autonomy only to blindness or to the force of circumstance. The latter merely cover the man who is breaking them with a passing disgrace, which time then transfers to the judges and the nations, on whom it remains forever.

1796

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

Denis Diderot

1805

★ 3.5

Lecture

The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.

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.

The Common Law · 1880

★ 3.5

Essay · Political literature

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

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

The intention of the lawgiver is the law.

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 2.3

Essay · Philosophical literature

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

St. Augustine

389

★ 2.2

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

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

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Every law is contrary to liberty.

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

★ 2.0

Essay · Political literature

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

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

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

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

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