Bad Laws Quotes

• Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

  Plato

  Wise, Wisdom, Witty

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• We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Law, People, Needs

  6 Copy quote

• With bad laws and good civil servants it's still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can't help.

  Otto von Bismarck

  Law, Helping, Servant

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• It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Law, Politics, Ruins

  Theodore Roosevelt (1904). “The Roosevelt Doctrine: Beng the Personal Utterances of the President on Various Matters of Vital Interest, Authoritatively Arranged for Reference in Their Logical Sequence; a Brief Summary of the Principles of American Citizenship and Government”

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• The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Law, Government, Justice

  Abraham Lincoln (1999). “The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Observations”, Gramercy

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• Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

  Edmund Burke

  Freedom, Carpe Diem, Law

  Speech at the Guildhall, Bristol, England, 6 Sept. 1780

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• We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them.

  Alexander Bickel

  War, Law, Judging

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• Behind every bad law, a deep fear.

  Sarah Vowell

  Law, Behinds

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• Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.

  Frank Zappa

  Writing, Law, People

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.276, Simon and Schuster

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

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Success, Law, Political

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1869

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• Some of us do not accept the Establishment myth that bad laws must be obeyed.

  Tom Driberg

  Law, Political, Accepting

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• If the law is a bad law, there is always the contingent right to take action that you would not otherwise take.

  James Callaghan

  Law, Action, Ifs

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• Bad laws make bad customs.

  Jane Aiken Hodge

  Law, Customs

  Jane Aiken Hodge (2014). “Watch the Wall, My Darling”, p.16, A&C Black

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• Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

  Denis Diderot

  Law, Break, Authority

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• It is not possible to make a bad law. If is is bad, it is not a law.

  Carrie Nation

  Law, Ifs

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• No nation went into oblivion or was destroyed because it had bad laws, or because its statesmen were not intelligent, but because of INTERNAL CORRUPTION, and because they could not maintain the POWER OF SELF-CONTROL.

  Melvin J. Ballard

  Intelligent, Self, Law

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• The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.

  Wendell Phillips

  Men, Law, Feet

  Speech, Boston, Mass., 12 Apr. 1852

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• When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mean, Law, Example

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)”, p.160, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

  John Y. Campbell

  Law, Prison, Said

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• Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Men, Law

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• Roe v. Wade was bad law and bad medical science.

  Fred Thompson

  Law, Wade, Medical Science

  "Did NBC Misrepresent Thompson as Being Opposed to Overturning Roe?" by Mark Finkelstein, www.newsbusters.org. March 12, 2007.

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• It may be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Character, Law, Government

  Alexander Hamilton (2014). “The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay”, p.372, Yale University Press

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• There’s this powerful phrase in the legal world, “Difficult cases make bad law.” The exception is the difficult case. You can’t generalize them by definition. So although they are fascinating, they don’t solve any problem because they’re so one of a kind.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Powerful, Law, Phrases

  "The Rumpus Interview With Malcolm Gladwell". Interview with Stephen Elliott, therumpus.net. January 22, 2009.

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• Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality. Freedom of speech, freedom of religious thought, and the right to due process for composers, performers and retailers are imperiled if the PMRC and the major labels consummate this nasty bargain.

  Frank Zappa

  Religious, Writing, Law

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.276, Simon and Schuster

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• In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find the enviable existence

  John Stuart Mill

  Law, Intellectual, Liberty

  John Stuart Mill (2017). “Utilitarianism”, p.13, Coventry House Publishing

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