Quotessence
Home / Authors / Philip K. Howard Biography
Philip K. Howard

Philip K. Howard Biography

Lawyer

Related Quotes

“By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc. Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it.”

LawResponsibilityTyrannyRegulationBureaucracyBureaucratsHuman Judgment
Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
Create image

“Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.”

PeopleIfsHumansIdeasEnoughLawTurnsEvilClearModernHuman NatureOppositesUltimateComplicatedUncertaintyCooperation
Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
Create image

“Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.”

LanguageLibertyRolesDemocracyRightsProtectAbsolutesAccomplishCompromiseReformAbsolute Power
Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
Create image

“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”

ThinkingShouldTryingImportantAmericaLawEnergyGoalAnswersMillionsJudgmentFinalsIndividualityConvictionAccomplishResolveDisagreementResourcefulnessCubicles
Author:Philip K. Howard
Create image