Magistrates Quotes - Page 2

• It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy, such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a providence and a future state, seem to loosen, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society.

  David Hume

  Wise, Philosophy, Jealous

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2000). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition”, p.101, Oxford University Press

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• Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary patriot.

  James Madison

  Fall, Independent, Men

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• That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Law, People

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.16, Hackett Publishing

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• When the supreme magistrate will not execute the judgment of the Lord, those who made him supreme magistrate, under God, who have under God, sovereighn liberty to dispose of crowns and kingdoms, are to execute the judgment of the Lord, when wicked men make the law of God of none effect.

  Samuel Rutherford

  Men, Law, Wicked

  Samuel Rutherford (1843). “Lex, Rex, Or, The Law and the Prince: A Dispute for the Just Prerogative of King and People, Containing the Reasons and Causes of the Most Necessary Defensive Wars of the Kingdom of Scotland and of Their Expedition for the Aid and Help of Their Dear Brethren of England. In which Their Innocency is Asserted and a Full Answer is Given to a Seditious Pamphlet Entituled, "Sacro-sancta Regum Majestas," Or, The Sacred and Royal Prerogative of Christian Kings ; Under the Name of J.A., But Penned by John Maxwell ...”, p.96

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• The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty...

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Men, Suffering

  Thomas Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, founders.archives.gov. June 18, 1779.

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• A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

  Thomas Jefferson

  4th Of July, Rights, Law

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.118

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• The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.

  Edward Gibbon

  Religious, Reflection, People

  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ch. 2 (1776 - 1788)

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• Although in our country the Chief Magistrate must almost of necessity be chosen by a party and stand pledged to its principles and measures, yet in his official action he should not be the President of a part only, but of the whole people of the United States.

  James K. Polk

  Party, People, History

  Inaugural Address, avalon.law.yale.edu. March 04, 1845.

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• The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God (which, we must note, was addressed specifically to perennial problems in political morality), then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) — the standard of self-law or autonomy.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Men, Self, Expression

  "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today".

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• The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Law, Sick

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1771 - 1779, the Summary View, and the Declaration of Independence”, p.263, Cosimo, Inc.

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• No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Atheist, Law, Atheism

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• Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

  Bertrand Russell

  Elderly, Umpires, Ignorant

  Look Magazine, February 23, 1954.

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• The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

  Edward Gibbon

  Rome, People, History

  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ch. 2 (1776 - 1788)

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• Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.

  Grover Cleveland

  Exercise, Presidential, Voting

  Grover Cleveland, United States. President (1885-1889 : Cleveland), United States. President (1893-1897 : Cleveland) (1968). “Grover Cleveland, 1837-1908: chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”

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• Though we have clear and full scriptures in the New Testament for abolishing the Ceremonial law, yet we nowhere read in all the new Testament of the abolishing of the Judicial law, so far as it did concern the punishing of sins against the Moral law, of which Heresy and seducing of souls is one, and a great one. Once God did reveal his will for punishing those sins by such and such punishments. He who will hold that the Christian Magistrate is not bound to inflict such punishments for such sins, is bound to prove that those former laws of God are abolished, and to shew some scripture for it.

  George Gillespie

  Christian, Law, Punishment

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• If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would itself be venerable enough.

  Blaise Pascal

  Art, Healing, Squares

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works”, p.36, Cosimo, Inc.

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• But the Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing; though overcome by testimonies they yield not an inch. It is a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. If they give a prince or magistrate a thousand florins, they extort twenty thousand from the subjects in payment. We must ever keep on guard against them.

  Martin Luther

  Men, Yield, Race

  Martin Luther (1848). “The Table Talk Or Familiar Discourse of Martin Luther”, p.352

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• It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Office, Abuse, Lines

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.463

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• In Belgium, the magistrate has the dignity of a prince, but by Bacchus, it is true that the brewer is king.

  Emile Verhaeren

  Kings, Beer, Dignity

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• The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate, created and circumstanced, as would be a president of the United States.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Wise, War, President

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1831). “The Federalist on the New Constitution”, p.373

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• None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Liberty, Together, Civil Rights

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• This whole society, up to now, has been very violent with the individual. It does not believe in the individual; it is against the individual. It tries in every possible way to destroy you for its own purposes. It needs clerks, it needs stationmasters, deputy-collectors, policemen, magistrates, it needs soldiers. It does not need human beings.

  Rajneesh

  Believe, Soldier, Society

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• If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Believe, People, Vampire

  "The Social Contract". Book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762.

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• Timid and cowardly soldiers cause the loss of a nation's independence; but pusillanimous magistrates destroy the empire of the laws, the rights of the throne, and even social order itself.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Loss, Rights, Order

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• During the games of the Circus, he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms, of the republic.

  Edward Gibbon

  Law, Games, History

  Edward Gibbon, J. B. Bury (2012). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Edited in Seven Volumes with Introduction, Notes, Appendices, and Index”, p.427, Cambridge University Press

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