Law Quotes - Page 40

• Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.

  Jose Saramago

  Silence, Should, Conscience

  "Todos os Nomes (All the Names)". Book by Jose Saramago translated by Margaret Jull Costa, 1999.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a big difference between keeping the peace, which is something folks do pretty well themselves, and enforcing the law, which is another thing altogether.

  L. Neil Smith

  Differences, Bigs, Folks

  "Ceres". Book by L. Neil Smith, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective economic value, anyway while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process.

  L. Neil Smith

  Giving Up, Government, Economic Value

  "Ceres". Book by L. Neil Smith, 2009.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any politico who's afraid of his constituents being armed, should be. Leaders of the anti-gun movement (for the most part, politicians who enthusiastically advocate confiscatory taxation and government control of everything) realize that a populace is much easier to herd, loot and dispose of if it has been stripped of its weapons. The naked fraud and transparent fascism of victim disarmament must be eradicated through the repeal of all gun laws at every level of government.

  L. Neil Smith

  Gun, Government, Leader

  "The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet". The Libertarian Enterprise Article, www.ncc-1776.org. October 18, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• America didn't have a drug problem before it passed drug laws. While drugs were consumed by large numbers of people — the number of women habituated to the opium found in laudanum was, no pun intended, staggering — they were, for the most part, easily able to live their lives, do their jobs, and raise their families pretty much the way we do today.

  L. Neil Smith

  America, Drug, Problem

  "Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. June 13, 2010.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Repealing drug laws would remove the risks involved with producing and distributing drugs, bringing 'street prices' crashing down (it's estimated that a 'spoon' of heroin would cost about a quarter in the free market), thereby eradicating any incentive that criminals might have to compete with legitimate businesses, and greatly reducing if not eliminating altogether any economic reason to 'push' drugs on children.

  L. Neil Smith

  Children, Risk, Drug

  "Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. June 13, 2010.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.

  Vernor Vinge

  Jobs, Revenge, Left

  Vernor Vinge (2010). “A Fire Upon The Deep”, p.428, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• While the collateral consequences of drugs such as cocaine are indisputably severe, they are not unlike those which flow from the misuse of other, legal, substances.

  Byron White

  Knowledge, Responsibility, Science

  Harmelin v. Michigan 501 U.S. 957 at 1023, 1991.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy, and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal, and have done so for a very long time.... Respondent would have us announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do.

  Byron White

  Issues, Long, Fundamentals

  Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 1986.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.... There should be, therefore, great resistance to ... redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily takes to itself further authority to govern the country without express constitutional authority.

  Byron White

  Country, Rights, Roots

  Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 1986.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• A written regulation in NASCAR is about as reliable as an Egyptian immigration law.

  Brock Yates

  Immigration, Regulation, Nascar

  Brock Yates (2004). “NASCAR Off the Record”, p.126, MotorBooks International

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The early 1970s was a time when illegal acts were in style. Everybody was going nuts with causes, most of them against the law.

  Brock Yates

  Nuts, Style, Causes

  Brock Yates (2003). “Cannonball!”, p.13, MotorBooks International

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that "government", as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a "Grameenized private sector", a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Believe, Government, Justice

  Muhammad Yunus (2001). “Banker to the Poor: The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, Founder of the Grameen Bank”, Oxford University Press, USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What Americans don't want to admit ... is that not only is there not a contradiction between state regulation and freedom, but in order for us to actually be free in our social interactions, there must be an extremely elaborated network of health, law, institutions, moral rules and so on.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Order, Want, Regulation

  21 Copy quote

• You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  People, Vices, Virtue

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just's remarks on autumn 1792, as quoted in "Oeuvres Completes de Saint-Just", Volume 1, edited by Charles Vellay (p. 380), 1908.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Wise, People, Revolution

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just's remarks on autumn 1792, as quoted in "Oeuvres Completes de Saint-Just", Volume 1, edited by Charles Vellay (p. 264), 1908.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• It has always seemed to me that the social order was implicit in the very nature of things, and required nothing more from the human spirit than care in arranging the various elements; that a people could be governed without being made thralls or libertines or victims thereby; that man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Believe, Heart, Men

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just's speech to the National Convention, April 24, 1793.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Men, Desire, Body

  "Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France". Speech to the National Convention, April 24, 1793.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon. The Revolution must stop when it has perfected public happiness and liberty through the laws.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Liberty, Revolution, Bizarre

  Speech fragment, 1794.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who should regulate the media? Who should control the press? The commentariat agonises, as if the choice was between state control through some autocratic press law or a new Press Complaints Commission redecorated with false teeth. But there is another way. Let journalists regulate themselves.... Let's have a little democracy in the media. Even in the Murdoch papers, the number of journalists who are irretrievably lawless and callous is quite small. Most of the disasters at the News of the World happened because its editors treated their staff in the style of Muammar Gaddafi.

  Neal Ascherson

  Numbers, Media, Editors

  4 Copy quote

• No matter where the skeptical thought originates, or how it gets access to our minds, we see at once that it flattens the level of life and every aspiration. It makes our character less vigorous. The gospel is not simply a philosophy of religion or law of life, but it is an apocalypse, showing the heavens to our thought, and so bringing its spiritual benedictions to every heart and life.

  Richard Salter Storrs

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Character

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 347), 1895.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The American capitalists are richer and stronger than their counterparts in other lands. They are also younger and more ignorant, and therefore more inclined to seek a rough settlement of difficulties without diplomatic subtlety and finesse. All that does not change the fact that American capitalism operates according to the same laws as the others, is confronted with the same fundamental problems, and is headed toward the same catastrophe.

  James P. Cannon

  Land, Ignorant, Stronger

  "Fascism and The Workers’ Movement". The Militant, www.marxists.org. March-April 1954.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Despite our founding principles and the many ways our constitution has protected individual liberties, we do, let's admit it, have a long history of shutting people out--african americans, women, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities--and throughout our history, we have found too many ways to divide and exclude people from their ownership of the law and protection under the law.

  Hillary Clinton

  Gay, Long, People

  10 Copy quote

• We don't pay judges to think; we pay judges to rule on the law.

  Jeff Sessions

  Thinking, Judging, Pay

  88 Copy quote

• It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.

  Simon Blackburn

  Fall, Doe, Facts

  Simon Blackburn (1999). “Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy”, p.113, Oxford University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source