Thomas Aquinas Quotes

A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Governmental power is the faculty to beat into submission all those who would dare to disobey the orders issued by the authorities. … Every governmental action is backed by constables, prison guards, and executioners. However beneficial a governmental action may appear, it is ultimately made possible only by the government's power to compel its subjects to do what many of them would not do if they were not threatened by the police and the penal courts.

Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons, viz, by those who make them, by those who execute them, and by those who suffer if they break them.

Do not have any doubt that I will apply the law over whoever is responsible for not complying with the law.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

All law is a dead letter without public opinion behind it.

The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.

The compulsions of the law seem to have been provided for those only who require compulsions

There be six chosen besides the Governor, which being chosen and sworn according to an Oath recorded for that purpose, shall have the power to administer justice according to the Laws here established, and for want thereof, according to the Rule of the Word of God.

Law … is but words and paper without the hands and swords of men

Those who can, must obey.

I am the law in Indiana.

Law not served by power is an illusion; but power not ruled by law is a menace which our nuclear age cannot afford

At the end of the day, we must respect the rule of law in respective jurisdictions.

The laws are the sole guardians of right, and when the magistrate dares not act, every person is insecure.

Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.

The ruling authority is liable to raise a claim which could justify a deviation from the law by saying: The law is supposed to serve the country. The law is merely one consideration, there are additional considerations which are no less important; the good of the country is one such consideration and it could possibly override the law….this is a very dangerous claim. The saying that patriotism is the last refuge of the charlatan is well known. This argument, taken alone, is liable to topple the principle of the legality of government and the rule of law together with it.

People expect that the law will be what the Supreme Court told them what the law was going to be.

...no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced

Two conditions are essential to the realization of justice according to law. The law must have an authority supreme over the will of the individual, and such an authority can arise only from a background of social acquiescence, which gives it the voice of indefinitely greater numbers than those of its expositors. Thus, the law surpasses the deliverances of even the most exalted of its prophets; the momentum of its composite will alone makes it effective to coerce the individual and reconciles him to his subserviency.

Law hath dominion over all things, over universal mind and matter ;, For there are reciprocities of rights, which no creature can gainsay.

In all governments, there must of necessity be both the law and the sword; laws without arms would give us not liberty, but licentiousness; and arms without laws, would produce not subjection, but slavery. The law, therefore, should be unto the sword what the handle is to the hatchet; it should direct the stroke and temper the force.

Laws or ordinances unobserved, or partially attended to, had better never have been made.