Best law & morality Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality.”

Law Term Moral Principles Return Morality Moral Principles Counterproductive Diminishing Returns

Book:Knowledge And Decisions

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

“Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral.”

People Law Social Process Moral Return Morality Negative Input Diminishing Returns

Book:Knowledge And Decisions

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons”

Reason Law Order Liberty Enemy Impossible Morality Property Organized Hypocrisy Coward Honour Robbery Dupes

Book:George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit

Source: George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit

“There is a law in human nature which draws us to like what we passionately condemn.”

Humans Law Human Nature Morality Draws

Author:George William Russell

“Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.”

Law Courage Morality Accomplished

Author:Baron de Montesquieu

“Lawyers, before any other group, must continue to point out how the system is really working-how it actually affects real people. They must constantly demonstrate to courts and legislatures alike the tragic results of legal nonintervention. They must highlight how legal doctrines no longer bear any relation to reality, whether in landlord and tenant law, holder in due course law, or any other law. In sum, lawyers must bring real morality into the legal consciousness”

People Real Reality Law Courses Results Consciousness Groups Bears Morality Ethics Relation Court Dues Lawyer Doctrine Tragic Legislature Highlights Landlord Tenants Legal Ethics

Author:William J. Brennan

“The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.”

“Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?”

Littles Real Law Sides Morality Bases Enforcement Real Questions Clout Niceties

Book:Heretics of Dune

Source: Heretics of Dune

“I consider morals and aesthetics one and the same, for they cover only one impulse, one drive inherent in our consciousness - to bring our life and all our actions into a satisfactory relationship with the events of the world as our consciousness wants it to be, in harmony with our life and according to the laws of consciousness itself.”

World Want Action Law Consciousness Moral Our Lives Events Morality Harmony Impulse Inherent Our Actions Aesthetics

Author:Naum Gabo

“Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.”

“For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.”

Source: Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations

“The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation.”

Self States Law Interest Natural Existence Modern Morality Foundation Prepared Appeals Preservation Ideological Natural Law Self Preservation

Book:Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year

“Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one technique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions and objectives in short, all the technical laws and customs which he encounters in office or factory.”

Action Law Spirit Sports Citizens Morality Office Tradition Independent Workers Finished Technique Objectives Encounters Relief Carrie Customs Distraction Factories Criteria Deviation

Author:Jacques Ellul

“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me... Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”

Mind May Two Law Heaven Wonder Moral Virtue Morality Worthy Doctrine Two Things Awe Moral Law Awe And Wonder

Author:Immanuel Kant

“Speak not of guilt, speak not of responsibility. When the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners; when the senses shiver and shudder, it is only a fool and and an irreverent person that will keep his distance, who will not embrace the good cause, marching towards the conquest of pleasures and passions. All of morality's laws - poorly understood and applied - are nil and cannot stand even for a moment, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners.”

Persons Moments Law Passion Speak Causes Pleasure Responsibility Fool Morality Understood Embrace Distance Guilt Senses Conquest Parades Banner Shiver Good Causes Irreverent

Author:C.P. Cavafy

“Whoever desires to live among men has to obey their laws this is what the secular morality of Western civilization comes down to. ... Rationality in the form of such obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think.”

Thinking Men Form Law Desire Morality Civilization Western Obedience Secular Rationality Western Civilization Desire To Live

Book:Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung

Source: Zeitschrift Fur Sozialforschung

“We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld.”

Needs Should Law Morality Clash Legality

Author:Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

“Proverbs were anterior to boots, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality.”

Age Law Morality Boots Vulgar Unwritten

Author:Benjamin Disraeli

“What can laws do without morals?”

Law Moral Morality

Book:Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin ...

Source: Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin ...

“As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad.”

Source: The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography

“If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place.”

Ifs Firsts Reason Law Sound Principles Morality Assuming Libertarian Arguing Objectives Contradiction No Reason Free Will Commodity

Author:William J. Murray

“In Iraq we are fighting against men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons who are capable of any atrocity. They wear no uniform; they respect no laws of warfare or morality. They take innocent lives to create chaos for the cameras.”

Men Law Fighting Morality Weapons Capable Hatred Cameras Blind Chaos Iraq Innocent Warfare Uniforms Atrocities Lethal Weapon Innocent Life

Author:George W. Bush

“We're always projecting our moral categories on things. I think that's inevitable. But capitalism places no particular value on morality. Morality in the market is enforced by contract and regulation and law, because morality is understood to be in conflict with the motive force of greed and accumulation.”

Thinking Law Values Force Moral Particular Morality Conflict Understood Capitalism Greed Inevitable Motive Contracts Categories Regulation Accumulation

Author:Michael Pollan

“Whatever may be the laws and customs of a country, women always give the tone to morals. Whether slaves or free, they reign, because their empire is that of the affections.”

Giving May Country Law Moral Morality Slave Affection Tone Empires Customs Reign

Author:Aime Martin

Law Quotes

Related topics

Law Quotes