Law Quotes - Page 113

Of course, uh, the universe is gradually slowing down and, uh, will eventually collapse inwardly on itself, according to the laws of entropy when all it's thermal and mechanical functions fail, thus rendering all human endeavors ultimately pointless. Just to put the gig in some sort of context.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.

Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.

The case has been going on for so long that I've forgotten whether I'm really innocent or guilty.

Law is order, and good law is good order.

Justice White's conclusion is perhaps correct, if one assumes that the task of a court of law is to plumb the intent of the particular Congress that enacted a particular provision. That methodology is not mine nor, I think, the one that courts have traditionally followed. It is our task, as I see it, not to enter the minds of the Members of Congress - who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both lawful and effective - but rather to give fair and reasonable meaning to the text of the United States Code, adopted by various Congresses at various times.

Every action has equal and opposite reaction. This is law of the universe and spares none. Wrong done and injustice inflicted is paid back in the same coin. No one has escaped justice of the universe. It is only a matter of time.

It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us.

People are made up of flaws.

The farmer doesn't sow any seed; he chooses it carefully for by experience he knows that the harvest will be of the same Nature of the sowing. The wise man observes the laws of life and lives accordingly. Therefore, you sow in the furrow of life generous and beneficial procedures for all that according to the law your harvest, being good will make your life better.

All civilization in a sense exists only in the mind. Gunpowder, textile arts, machinery, laws, telephones are not themselves transmitted from man to man or from generation to generation, at least not permanently. It is the perception, the knowledge and understanding of them, their ideas in the Platonic sense, that are passed along. Everything social can have existence only through mentality.

As in the piling up of hypothetical alternatives, creative accidents follow the law of probabilities the more we fish, the more likely we are to get a strike.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

The laws of gravity cannot be held responcible for people falling in love.

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.

Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance not only for their expression but also for the organization of people and forces to bring about the acceptance of the dissenter's claim....We have alternatives to violence.

The parliament is the supreme decision-making and legislative body in any democracy. It reflects the collective desires of the citizens and makes laws.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy.

The enlightened man is one with the law of causation.

It's round the world I've traveled; it's round the world I've roamed; but I've yet to see an outlaw drive a family from its home

Thought is action in rehearsal.

When we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

Our amended Constitution is the lodestar for our aspirations. Like every text worth reading, it is not crystalline. The phrasing is broad and the limitations of its provisions are not clearly marked. Its majestic generalities and ennobling pronouncements are both luminous and obscure. This ambiguity of course calls forth interpretation, the interaction of reader and text. The encounter with the Constitutional text has been, in many senses, my life's work.