George Combe Quotes

A license to practice law is not a license to violate it.

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.

I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics.

I was taught that a lawyer was supposed to be a custodian of the community's legal and ethical sense.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

Virtue is despotic; life, reputation, every earthly good, must be surrendered at her voice. The law may seem hard, but it is the guardian of what it commands; and is the only sure defence of happiness.

There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.

World hinges on moral foundations. God has made it so! God has made the universe to be based on a moral law. So long as man disobeys it he is revolting against God. That’s what we need in the world today - people who will stand for right and goodness.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

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

I think an ethical lawyer would absolutely refuse, if he or she had knowledge that this is the purpose for which her work would be used, that is, to conceal a fraudulent scheme from federal regulators.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.

There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.

You can't legislate morality.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

I try not to do anything that's immoral.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

The fundamental basis of ethics must be chosen in some non-scientific way.

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

Morality is a social necessity

To each among you, we have prescribed a law and a way of acting.

Ethics is not a job that anyone turns to naturally, but every public agency has to have it.

Ethical and legal are not synonyms. ;