Vladimir Putin Quotes

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.

Opposition doesn't mean to take arms and kill people and destroy everything.

Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance not only for their expression but also for the organization of people and forces to bring about the acceptance of the dissenter's claim....We have alternatives to violence.

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

Are all the laws to go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces, lest civil liberties be violated?

No war, foreign or domestic, is a sufficient reason for shutting up the courts … The shutting up of the courts is an abdication, a total dissolution of government ….

A State is not morally free to allow anarchy and license ... even if the majority should so desire.

Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.

Courts are all that stand between us and anarchy.

Is the nation able to enforce its own laws -- its own charter - in the face of an unsympathetic and actively hostile minority?

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

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

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent.

The very concept of law that protects us from tyranny has been lost. No longer the people's shield, law has become a weapon in the hands of government.

Reasoned and willing obedience to the laws of the State is the first lesson in non-co-operation.

We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey.

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.

I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.

The spirit of non-violence necessarily leads to humility. Non-violence means reliance on God, the rock of ages. If we would seek his aid, we must approach Him with a humble and contrite heart.

Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.

But if the laws are to be so trampled upon with impunity, and a minority is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government, and nothing but anarchy and confusion is to be expected thereafter.

The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.

The Congress fights not with violent but with nonviolent means, however imperfect, however crude the nonviolence may be.

Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.