Julian Baggini Quotes

We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld.

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.

Politicians may do as they please, so long as they violate no rule of right, no principle of justice, no law of God; but in no world, in no order, or condition, have men the right to do wrong.

We don't break the law.

There is respect for law, and then there is complicity in lawlessness.

No, moral conscience is one thing, the law is another. We have to hold onto this difference.

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

Obedience to the law is itself a moral duty.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.

I could easily say that, for quite a long time before I became mayor, I had obeyed all laws.

All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.

The law, that is what makes men stay honest.

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.

Good laws are the offspring of bad actions.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.

My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?

Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot…change the essential nature of things—making evil good, and good, evil.

I would not hold that we must judge by the favorable or adverse result alone whether an undertaking was just or unjust.

What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.