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Laws Quotes

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Laws Quotes

“You know, we were very overconfident about these institutions and how well designed they are. Then it turned out that a lot of what makes American democracy work happened by, you know, it was really norms rather than laws or a general agreement. You know, that, for example, that the president publishes his tax returns. You know, that wasn't a law, it was just a habit. You know, maybe it's time to make it a law. So thinking carefully about what changes we can make to ensure genuine legitimacy and also to ensure people's feelings and belief in legitimacy, I think that's another important addition to the conversation.”

AmericaDemocracyHabitsLawsAmerican DemocracyNormsAgreements
Author:Anne Applebaum
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“Laws in industrialized nations tend to protect profits over life. Just a glimpse of anymals in our food industries (please see the appendix) can help readers to understand why religious teachings focus on respect for and protection of anymals. A hen is fated, from the day she hatches, to a pubescent death on a dismemberment belt. Calves are purposefully kept anemic and perpetually restrained to create veal. Turkeys are genetically manipulated to be too large to walk or breed naturally. Female anymals are perpetually impregnated, and their young taken from them, until they are “spent” and trucked to slaughter. Routine treatment of anymals through industrialized agriculture is, quite frankly, a moral and religious outrage.”

EthicsVeganismSlaughterLawsReligionsFactory FarmingFood IndustryAnymalsAnymal LiberationReligious Ethics
Book:Animals and World Religions
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“When left alone, quantum particles behave as multiple images of themselves (as waves, really), simultaneously moving through all possible paths in space and time. Now, again, why do we not experience this multitude around ourselves? Is it because we are probing things around us all the time? Why do all experiments that involve, say, the position of a particle make the particle suddenly be somewhere rather than everywhere? No one knows. Before you probe it, a particle is a wave of possibilities. After you've probed it, it is somewhere, and subsequently it is somewhere for ever, rather than everywhere again. Strange, that. Nothing, within the laws of quantum physics, allows for such a collapse to happen. It is an experimental mystery and a theoretical one. Quantum physics stipulates that whenever something is there, it can transform into something else, of course, but it cannot disappear. And since quantum physics allows for multiple possibilities simultaneously, these possibilities should then keep existing, even after a measurement is made. But they don't. Every possibility but one vanishes. We do not see any of the others around us. We live in a classical world, where everything is based on quantum laws but nothing resembles the quantum world.”

LawTimeSpaceKnowledgePositionExperienceDisappearPhysicsLiveQuantumMultiplePossibilitiesParticlesKnowPossibleMeasurementQuantum PhysicsLeft AloneLawsWavesSomethingTransformPathsImagesProbingSomewhereEverywhereClassicalProbeSimultaneouslyVanishes
Book:The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond
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“Dogmatic theology is, by its very nature, unchangeable. The same can be said in regard to the spirit of the law. Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature. Philosophy, law and ethics, to be effective in a dynamic world must be dynamic; they must be made vital enough to keep pace with the progress of life and science. In recent civilization ethics, because controlled by theology and law, which are static, could not duly influence the dynamic, revolutionary progress of technic and the steadily changing conditions of life; and so we witness a tremendous downfall of morals in politics and business. Life progresses faster than our ideas, and so medieval ideas, methods and judgments are constantly applied to the conditions and problems of modern life. This discrepancy between facts and ideas is greatly responsible for the dividing of modern society into different warring classes, which do not understand each other. Medieval legalism and medieval morals- the basis of the old social structure-being by their nature conservative, reactionary, opposed to change, and thus becoming more and more unable to support the mighty social burden of the modern world, must be adjudged responsible in a large measure for the circumstances which made the World War inevitable.”

WarPhilosophyScienceProgressCivilizationTheologyModern WorldLawsDiscrepancy
Book:Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering
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“At all events, in a society, all of whose members are free, and equal in the true sense of the words, there is no other means than free contracts, by which to form combinations or build up relations of any kind. Compulsion by laws of any kind or in any form is absolutely excluded by the very orders of liberty and equality.”

GovernmentLibertyEqualityContractsAnarchismStateLawsAnarcho CommunismFree Association
Book:An Anarchist Reader
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“It's an insidious thing," Wanda said. "It never happens overnight. This kind of thing crept into our community a long time ago. It latched on. It fed on prejudice. Selfishness. Peoples inability to see life through someone else's eyes. And it grew, bigger and bigger, until we got to a point where some people don't even question why a cop should be allowed to shoot first and ask questions later.”

RacismPoliceProtestRebellionGun ControlPolice BrutalityLawsCopsAnger Is A Gift
Book:Anger Is a Gift
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“Those dear to me took fright for my safety and, perhaps, my sanity. Kings, they explained, do not walk like beggars for hundreds of miles. My response was that if a beggar could managed the feat, then why not a king? Did they think me less capable than a beggar? Sometimes I think that I am. The beggar knows much that the king can only guess. And yet who draws up the codes for begging ordinances? Often I wonder what my experience in life--my easy life following the Desolation, and my current level of comfort--has given me of any true experience to use in making laws. If we had to rely on what we knew, kings would only be of use in creating laws regarding the proper heating of tea and the cushioning of thrones.”

WisdomKingsExperienceEqualityFairnessLawsClassismCapabilitiesBeggars
Book:The Way of Kings
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“[W]hat befell the philosophers in AD 529 was not just one single law but a staccato burst of legal aggression issued by Justinian. ‘Your Clemency . . . the Glorious and Indulgent’ Justinian is how laws of this period referred to him. Justinian’s reverence, the legal code of the time announced, shone out ‘as a specially pure light, like that of a star’, while Justinian himself was referred to as ‘Your Holiness’; the ‘Glorious emperor’. There was little glorious or indulgent about what was coming. And there was certainly nothing that was clement. This was the end. The ‘impious and wicked pagans’ were to be allowed to continue in their ‘insane error’ no longer. Anyone who refused salvation in the next life would, from now on, be all but damned in this one. A series of legal hammer blows fell: anyone who offered sacrifice would be executed. Anyone who worshipped statues would be executed. Anyone who was baptized – but who then continued to sacrifice – they, too, would be executed. The laws went further. This was no longer mere prohibition of other religious practices. It was the active enforcement of Christianity on every single, sinful pagan in the empire. The roads to error were being closed, forcefully. Everyone now had to become Christian. Every single person in the empire who had not yet been baptized now had to come forward immediately, go to the holy churches and ‘entirely abandon the former error [and] receive saving baptism’. Those who refused would be stripped of all their property, movable and immovable, lose their civil rights, be left in penury and, ‘in addition’ – as if what had gone before was not punishment but mere preamble, they would be ‘subject to the proper punishment’. If any man did not immediately hurry to the ‘holy churches’ with his family and force them also to be baptized, then he would suffer all of the above – and then he would be exiled. The ‘insane error’ of paganism was to be wiped from the face of the earth.”

PhilosophyChristianityWorshipPunishmentLawsMonotheismClemency
Book:The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
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“Out of all the froth and fury that was being issued from the government at the time, one law would become infamous for the next 1,500 years. Read this law and, in comparison to some of Justinian’s other edicts, it sounds almost underwhelming. Filed under the usual dull bureaucratic subheading, it is now known as ‘Law 1.11.10.2’. ‘Moreover,’ it reads, ‘we forbid the teaching of any doctrine by those who labour under the insanity of paganism’ so that they might not ‘corrupt the souls of their disciples.’ The law goes on, adding a finicky detail or two about pay, but largely that is it. Its consequences were formidable. This was this law that forced Damascius and his followers to leave Athens. It was this law that caused the Academy to close. It was this law that led the English scholar Edward Gibbon to declare that the entirety of the barbarian invasions had been less damaging to Athenian philosophy than Christianity was. This law’s consequences were described more simply by later historians. It was from this moment, they said, that a Dark Age began to descend upon Europe.”

PhilosophyChristianityHistoryPunishmentRepressionDark AgesBarbarismLawsMonotheism
Book:The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
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“Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober.”

InspirationYouthWineDancingDrinkingOld AgeDrunkDaringSoberPlatoFree SpiritLawsDionysosLegal Age
Book:The Complete Essays
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“That the laws which have generally been adopted in the United States, for the government of women, have been framed almost entirely for the exclusive benefit of men, and with a design to oppress women, by depriving them of all control over their property, is too manifest to be denied.”

LawsOppression Of WomenBenefit Of Men
Book:Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman
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“At the heart of the American paradigm is the perception that law and its agents . . . police officers, correctional officers, attorneys and judges . . . are color-blind and thus justice is impartial, objective and seeks la verdad (the truth). But, la realidad (reality) differs.”

JusticePoliceEqualityLaw EnforcementEqual RightsAttorneyJudgeLawsLegal SystemJudicial SystemCourtsCorrectional Officer
Book:Latino Police Officers in the United States: An Examination of Emerging Trends and Issues
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“As regards the whole moral twaddle of people about one another, it is time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment morally ought to be opposed to our taste! Let us leave this nonsense and this bad taste to those who have nothing else to do, save to drag the past a little distance further through time, and who are never themselves the present ... We, however, would seek to become what we are ... making laws for ourselves and creating ourselves! And for this purpose we must become the best students and discoverers of all the laws and necessities in the world. [335]”

KnowledgeMoralityLawsSelf CreationMoralism
Book:The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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“There are human made laws and divine laws of nature, sometimes these laws coincide but not always. To paraphrase Saint Thomas Aquinas, any law that uplifts humankind, gives rein to other people expressing the profundity of life, and gives flight to their personality is just. Or as expressed by Martin Luther King, Jr., any law is unjust that distorts the soul, damages the personality of any person, bestows any group with a false sense of class superiority, or imposes upon any individual or oppressed group a segregated and false sense of inferiority.”

LawJusticePrejudiceOppressionSegregationLaws Of NatureInferiorityLawsUplifting QuotesNatural Laws
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Police not enforcing laws results in a high crime rate that is formally reported as a low crime rate in police statistics.”

LawResultsCrimePoliceRateReportsStatisticsEnforcementPolice BrutalityPolicemenHighPolice OfficerNotLawsPolice CorruptionPolice StateLegal SystemResultPolicemanReportingPolice ReformPolice ProceduralPolice ServiceLowReportResults QuotesReportedEnforceStatistics QuotesStatistical AnalysisFormallyEnforcingEnforcing Laws
Author:Steven Magee
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“Quantum fluctuations are, at their root, completely a-causal, in the sense that cause and effect and ordering of events in time is not a part of how these fluctuations work. Because of this, there seem not to be any correlations built into these kinds of fluctuations because 'law' as we understand the term requires some kind of cause-and-effect structure to pre-exist. Quantum fluctuations can precede physical law, but it seems that the converse is not true. So in the big bang, the establishment of 'law' came after the event itself, but of course even the concept of time and causality may not have been quite the same back then as they are now.”

ScienceUniversePhysicsQuantumCause And EffectCosmologyQuantum MechanicsLawsSingularityBig BangCausationFluctuationsQuantum FluctuationsA Causal
Author:Sten F. Odenwald
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