Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.
The gardener plants trees, not one berry of which he will ever see: and shall not a public man plant laws, institutions, government, in short, under the same conditions?
The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.
Passions are no more forgiving than human laws and they reason more justly. Are they not based on a conscience of their own, infallible as an instinct?
God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.
The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.