Archive

Quotes

Everything that has wings is beyond the reach of the law.

—Joseph Joubert, 1791

Petty laws breed great crimes.

—Ouida, 1880

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law.

—Emma Goldman, 1917

To make laws that man cannot and will not obey serves to bring all law into contempt.

—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1860

However harmless a thing is, if the law forbids it, most people will think it wrong.

—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896

Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.

—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

—William Empson, 1928

In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins its case.

—Rwandan proverb

Necessity knows no law except to conquer.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.

—Han Yu, c. 800

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.

—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.

—Tacitus, c. 110

It is better to live unknown to the law.

—Irish proverb