The greatest veneration one can show the law is to keep a watch on it.
—Nadine Gordimer, 1971Kings and fools know no law.
—German proverbLaw makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
—William Empson, 1928A functioning police state needs no police.
—William S. Burroughs, 1959Curse on all laws but those which love has made.
—Alexander Pope, 1717Let us have peace, but let us have liberty, law, and justice first.
—Frederick Douglass, 1878No law is sufficiently convenient to all.
—Roman proverbThe law is far, the fist is near.
—Korean proverbIt may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962Resorting to the law to resolve a dispute is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.
—Quentin Crisp, 1984Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
—Aleister Crowley, 1904The law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
—Voltairine de Cleyre, 1890We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.
—Samuel Pepys, 1661The law’s made to take care o’ raskills.
—George Eliot, 1860The more laws, the more lawbreakers.
—Tao Te Ching, c. 500 BCTo make laws that man cannot and will not obey serves to bring all law into contempt.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1860No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law.
—Emma Goldman, 1917The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.
—Tacitus, c. 110If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
—Francis Bacon, 1615The law is established from above but becomes custom below.
—Su Zhe, c. 1100War has silenced all laws.
—Lucan, c. 65It is better to live unknown to the law.
—Irish proverbThe law looks at no one’s face.
—Gabriel Okara, 1964In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins its case.
—Rwandan proverbWhen law can do no right,
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.
Better no law than no law enforced.
—Danish proverbLaws, like houses, lean on one another.
—Edmund Burke, 1765Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.
—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear of the Law.
—James Joyce, 1939However harmless a thing is, if the law forbids it, most people will think it wrong.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.
—Han Yu, c. 800To live outside the law, you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan, 1966Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844An unjust law is no law at all.
—Saint Augustine, 395Petty laws breed great crimes.
—Ouida, 1880If law and justice do not attain their ends, the people will be unable to move hand or foot.
—Confucius, c. 500Everything that has wings is beyond the reach of the law.
—Joseph Joubert, 1791Necessity knows no law except to conquer.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC