Guido Calabresi Quotes

In a society which is structured the wrong way, piety has no effect.

To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.

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

Religion is not man's relationship to God, it is man's relationship to man.

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

A family is where character is formed, values are learned, ethics are created, and society preserved.

Science of Society

Law alone cannot make men see right.

The secular law has as its task not to turn the world lying in evil into the Kingdom of God, but to prevent it from turning into hell.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government.

The law exists to express our values.

You can't disobey the rules every time you disapprove. However, when you're considering something that constitutes an extreme abridgement of your rights, conscience is the court of last resort.

The primary purpose of organized society is to enable everybody to get a living.

The ultimate relationship between justice and law will be an eternal subject for speculation and analysis. But it may be said that in a democratic society, law is the form which free men give to justice.

Humility is of central importance; I think it's an underappreciated virtue in the contemporary discussion of law and politics.

If there is anything I am about, it is I want justice in society.

I teach ethics at the FBI academy, which is ironic.

I want to bring more lawv and romance into the society.

I try to have the right thing happen at the end of the case, try to have the case have a moral compass to it, try to do a little teaching while I'm at it because that's the, you know, that's the preacher in me.

You can't build a society without law.

The law is a crude machine at best, and only spits out something approaching justice of its attendants are committed to justice. As lawyering has become less about doing right and more about doing what you can get away with, our standards of acceptable shenanigans-as-usual seem to be in a free fall.

The first bond of society is marriage.

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

Is everything right because the law allows it?

For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.