Statutes Quotes

• Statutes are mere milestone, telling how far yesterday's thought had traveled; and the talk of the sidewalk today is the law of the land. With us, law in nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

  Wendell Phillips

  Law, Land, Yesterday

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.264

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• Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.

  Jonathan Gruber

  Ignorance, Stupid People, Obamacare

  "Advocate's Comments On ACA Now A Liability For Law's Supporters". "All Things Considered", www.npr.org. December 9, 2014.

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• It's highly ironic that it was the conservatives on the court who overturned so many statutes.

  Jonathan Turley

  Ironic, Court

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• Burn all the statutes and their shelves: They stir us up against our kind; And worse, against ourselves.

  William Wordsworth

  Kind, Shelves

  William Wordsworth (1848). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth: Together with a Description of the Country of the Lakes in the North of England”, p.201

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• In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.

  Warren Buffett

  Stupidity, Limitation

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• Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of authority, but add no quota of inspired wisdom.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Taken, Justice, Decision

  Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1982). “Cardozo on the Law: Including the Nature of the Judicial Process, The Growth of the Law, The Paradoxes of Legal Science, Law and Literature”

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• By statute, Congress has given the president the authority to suspend immigration - any class of immigration if he deems it in the national interest.

  Ted Cruz

  Class, President, Immigration

  Source: time.com

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• The wise fools who sit in the high places of justice fail to see that in revolutionary times vital issues are settled not by statutes, decrees and authorities, but in spite if them.

  Helen Keller

  Wise, Issues, Justice

  Helen Keller (1967). “Helen Keller, her Socialist years: writings and speeches”

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• I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reading, Mean, Law

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.37, Rowman & Littlefield

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• For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

  John F. Kennedy

  Religious, Virginia, Years

  Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

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• Our statute books gradually became laden with gross, stereotyped distinctions between the sexes and, indeed, throughout much of the 19th century the position of women in our society was, in many respects, comparable to that of blacks under the pre-Civil War slave codes.

  William J. Brennan

  Sex, War, Book

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• The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.

  Noah Webster

  Law, Foundation, Attention

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• Due to the oath I swore to the constitution when I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, by virtue of the universal human right to self defense, in accordance with the Supreme Court case, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the statutes under which I am being charged are unconstitutional and thus null and void, and on behalf of all freedom loving Americans, I plead not guilty.

  Adam Kokesh

  Marine, Self, United States

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• A business is not defined by its name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the business mission. Only a clear definition of the mission and purpose of the organization makes possible clear and realistic business objectives.

  Peter Drucker

  Names, Organization, Purpose

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• Nature is hieroglyphic. Each prominent fact in it is like a type; its final use is to set up one letter of the infinite alphabet, and help us by its connections to read some statement or statute applicable to the conscious world.

  Thomas Starr King

  Nature, Connections, Finals

  Thomas Starr King (1864). “The White Hills: Their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry”, p.394

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• What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.

  Christopher Peterson

  Real, Decision, Democracy

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• But hereof be assured, that all is not lawful nor just that is statute by civil laws; neither yet is everything sin before God, which ungodly persons allege to be treason.

  John Knox

  Law, Sin, Treason

  "The Breakers of the Yoke: Sketches and Studies of the Men". Book by J. S. MacIntosh, p. 303, August 13, 2011.

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• If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law.

  Harlan F. Stone

  Rights, Offending, Law

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• Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks.

  John Milton

  Thinking, Land, Understanding

  John Milton (1835). “Prose Works”, p.112

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• We've got to get rid of this discrimination, this chilling, this bigotry toward gays and lesbians that are reflected in literally hundreds and hundreds of statutes and regulations in this country.

  Ralph Nader

  Country, Gay, Regulation

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• I think the International Criminal Court could be a threat to American security interests, because the prosecutor of the court has enormous discretion in going after war crimes. And the way the Statute of Rome is written, responsibility for war crimes can be taken all the way up the chain of command. This is the sort of investigation that some people who live in Fairyland might like to undertake, but which bears no relationship at all to conditions in the real world.

  John Bolton

  Real, War, Taken

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• By creating a self-policing, self-reporting, sort of self-monitoring culture through law, through statute, and imposing that on the academic world, I think not only are we losing a significant measure of freedom in academic traditions and in our civil society, but we're actually making ourselves less competitive with every other country around the world that does not do that. Because that's where researchers are going to go and that's where academics are going to go. And ultimately, that's where breakthroughs are going to occur.

  Edward Snowden

  Country, Thinking, Law

  Source: www.nesta.org.uk

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• [I watch] all that stuff - Game of Thrones and all the other series. How about House of Cards? As for Boardwalk Empire - that's another period of government overreach, but at least they use the amendment process! In real life, the executive branch, by violating the Constitution, is using statutes in place of constitutional amendments to diminish our liberty.

  Edward Snowden

  Real, Government, Games

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• During the whole month that negroes were being beaten by police and washed down the sewer with water hoses, Kennedy and - and King was in jail begging for the federal government to intervene, Kennedy's reply was, "No federal statutes have been violated." And it was only when the negroes erupted that Kennedy come on the television with all his old pretty words.

  Malcolm X

  Kings, Jail, Government

  Interview with Robert Penn Warren, whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu. June 2, 1964.

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• Every statute for terrorism requires violence.

  Bernard von NotHaus

  Violence, Terrorism

  Source: www.wherestherage.com

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