Famous Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Jefferson

[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.

Thomas Jefferson

Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

Thomas Jefferson

A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law.

Thomas Jefferson

Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it.

Thomas Jefferson

If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.

Thomas Francis Meagher

Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies it.

Thomas Jordan Jarvis

In the first place I remark that no human law is perfect in its construction or execution.

Viktor Yushchenko

Respect for the law must be the basis for all legal action.

Vilfredo Pareto

Empirical laws [...] have only slight or even no value beyond the limits within which they have been observed to be true.

Vilfredo Pareto

Theories of "natural law" and the "law of nations" are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. [...] "Natural law" is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves[....]

Victoria Woodhull

All that is good and commendable now existing would continue to exist if all marriage laws were repealed tomorrow . . .

Victor Cousin

Written laws are formulas in which we endeavor to express as concisely as possible that which, under such or such determined circumstances, natural justice demands.

Victor Davis Hanson

Illegal immigration is praised only by those who benefit directly from it, whether in the familial sense of inexpensive nannies, cooks, or gardeners; or in the corporate interest of cheap labor in the hospitality industries, agriculture, and construction; or in the political sense of new liberal constituents; or in the tribal sense of expanding the so-called La Raza base. But the vast majority of Americans accept that when federal law is ignored, chaos ensues.

Victor Hugo

The beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law, that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague and incessant desire to injure some living being, it matters not who.

Hal Lindsey

The law was given to drive us to despair over the hopelessness of ever being able to keep it.

Greta Garbo

There seems to be a law that governs all our actions so I never make plans.

Giuseppe Mazzini

Labor is the divine law of our existence.

Gerhard Schroder

Next, we will create a modern immigration law.

Herbert Spencer

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

Herbert Spencer

Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.

Herbert Spencer

No physiologist who calmly considers the question in connection with the general truths of his science, can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization whatever: separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure: and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres.

Herbert Spencer

The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.

Herman Melville

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.

Henry David Thoreau

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them?

Henry David Thoreau

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

Henry David Thoreau

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

Henry David Thoreau

I say, break the law.

Henry David Thoreau

It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.

Henry David Thoreau

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.

Henry David Thoreau

To be right is more honorable than to be law abiding.

Henry David Thoreau

It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.

Henry David Thoreau

Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive.

H. L. Mencken

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