Lewis F. Powell Jr. Quotes

I love the system. Let me tell you why. People love it... The people, by and large, have great respect for our law and our system... Why do you think they go to that courthouse instead of killing each other in the streets, taking the law into their own hands?

Protests are fine. But in South Carolina we believe in the rule of law, and the people of this state should never doubt that as governor, I will enforce it.

Rule of law is the most important element in any civil society.

Nanny states are interested in social order. Daddy states are interested in public order.

One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.

What is going to rule our great commonwealth, the mob or the law?

Order is said to exist where the people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to prosecute their quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of referring the decision of their disputes and the redress of their injuries to the public authorities.

When those who uphold the law are strong, the state is strong. When they are weak, the state is weak

Those who challenge the law in one or another of its aspects weaken the whole legal structure of society. For one man to disobey a law he does not like is to invite others to disobey another law which he may regard as indispensable to his own livelihood - or life.

I just want everybody to follow the law.

We have to be a nation of laws.

It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.

There can be no civil peace without the rule of law.

A nation that will not enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its people.

There can be no prosperity without law and order.

Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.

One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them.

The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected.

For as the law is set over the magistrate, even so are the magistrates set over the people. And therefore, it may be truly said, "that the magistrate is a speaking law, and the law is a silent magistrate.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

My goal for reform is not necessarily to pass laws but to make sure the laws are being followed.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.