Legal Constraints Quotes

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.

The compulsions of the law seem to have been provided for those only who require compulsions

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even specially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities.

You can't just slander someone, defame them, lie about them. You can't incite people to crime. There's all sorts of reasonable restrictions on free speech that are already codified in the British common-law system.

Politicians may do as they please, so long as they violate no rule of right, no principle of justice, no law of God; but in no world, in no order, or condition, have men the right to do wrong.

The Warren Court wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution... I intend to succeed where they failed.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must be the general law; the minor, the action that conforms or does not conform to the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment. If the judge were constrained, or if he desired to frame even a single additional syllogism, the door would thereby be opened to uncertainty.

Freedom of expression is not absolute. Countries have laws that define the framework for exercising this right and which, for instance, condemn racist language.

Are there any limitations? Are they going to allow fornication in Times Square at high noon?

Law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience.

The fence and the boundary line are the symbols of the spirit of justice. They set the limits upon each man's interest to prevent one from taking advantage of the other.

It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.

Most people don't realize, I really have no faith in politics. I'm not a politician. If I thought you could change human hearts by laws, I would, but I don't.

The failure of love, that's what all laws are really.

Everyone should work within the ambit of law.

I, having no legal means of divesting myself of these odious powers put on record a formal protest against the existing law of marriage.

Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.

The liberty to make our laws does not give us the freedom nor the license to break our laws!

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

The laws would not prevent each man from living according to his inclination, unless individuals harmed each other

[J]ust because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right.

Every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty.