John Adams Quotes

Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.

In our country the law of the strong does not prevail. The strength of the law prevails.

There are laws for peace as well as war.

Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

It's about living in a world with rules, or a world without rules.

Societies cannot move forward without law, and our constitution is the cornerstone of the law and our National Assembly is its umbrella and fortress.

It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world.

If the king did not, without tiring, inflict punishment on those worthy to be punished, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish on a spit

Better a hundred years of tyranny than one day of anarchy.

Law is order, and good law is good order.

[The] fundamental principal of all just legislation [is] that the legislature shall not take the property of A and give it to B.

Anyone who takes it upon himself ... to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

As laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so good manners are necessary that laws may be maintained.

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

Justice is incidental to law and order

The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves

Where crime exists, force must exist to repress it. Who denies it? Certainly not Liberty; certainly not the Anarchists … we are the sternest enemies of invasion of person and property, and, although chiefly busy in destroying the causes thereof, have no scruples against such heroic treatment of its immediate manifestations as circumstances and wisdom may dictate

Law. Law. That is what saves nations from the most imminent dangers.

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.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

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.

When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.

Our laws are ultimately all that protect us from tyranny, and before them we are all equal - prime ministers and private citizens alike.

The law is the only sure protection of the weak, and the only efficient restraint upon the strong.