Frederic Bastiat Quotes

When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.

Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.

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.

Law is, for the most part, positive or mandatory. It prescribes certain duties which I am to do as the condition of my civic protection. Conscience is, for the most part, negative or prohibitory in its operation. It sets before me certain evils to be undone or repented of. Thus law aims to exalt its subject, or make him conventionally righteous; while conscience aims to humiliate him

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.

The law often allows what honor forbids.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

What is morally correct and what is legally correct are not always the same thing.

Law alone cannot make men see right.

It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.

If a law doesn’t produce a just result, then what good is it? …. If you don’t have a just result, then the law doesn’t matter.

In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system.

A human society obeys the dictates of reason and is guided and governed by a respect for justice.

Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God.

Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

In any society that is governed by the rule of law, some form of morality is always imposed. It's inescapable.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Thou shalt not steal. I mean defensively. On offense, indeed thou shall steal and thou must.

As a Senator I am opposed to duelling. As Ben. Wade, I recognize the code.

The law is immoral.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.