George Washington Quotes

People must live with the laws that we make.

We all must follow the rule of law, not the rule of aldermen.

Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obeys them.

I know no human being exempt from the law. The law is the security of the people of England; it is the security of every person that is governed, and of every person that governs.

The Law is one aspect of a much more concrete and encompassing relation than the relation between commanding and obeying that characterizes the imperative.

Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.

Laws are the sovereigns of sovereigns.

The submission of free people to the executive authority of government, is no more than a compliance with laws which they themselves have enacted.

We have a great many chiefs and headmen but, be they ever so great, they must all abide by the laws ... These laws are not made for any person in particular but for all.

It is not your great father who does this; but the laws of the country, which he and every one of his people is bound to regard.

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

Whatever the People has last ordained shall be held as binding by law.

The law, the will of the majority expressed in orderly, constitutional methods, is the only king to which we bow.

A government must govern, must prescribe and enforce laws within its sphere or cease to be a government. Moreover, the individual must be independent and free within his own sphere or cease to be an individual. The fundamental question ... is now, and always will be through what adjustments, by what actions, these principles may be applied.

While a law is in force it should be lived up to. You have a right to try to change it, and if you can persuade the majority that it should be changed then it will be changed. But you must abide by a law until it is changed or you will be flouting the fundamental things that make us a democracy and a law-abiding nation.

As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.

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

We have one authority and one law and everyone has the responsibility to follow that law and that authority.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

The bringing-about of order is the first and fundamental task of government. We accept limits on our rights for the sake of a larger social compact all the time.

The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.

If there are people who act outside the law, then the state must use legal means to impose law in the interests of majority. That's the way it's done in the U.S., and that's the way it's done in Russia.

What is crucial is there be laws.

If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.

We are ruled by public opinion, not by statute law.