The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.
—Tacitus, c. 110All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear of the Law.
—James Joyce, 1939The law looks at no one’s face.
—Gabriel Okara, 1964Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.
—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844To live outside the law, you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan, 1966If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
—Francis Bacon, 1615The greatest veneration one can show the law is to keep a watch on it.
—Nadine Gordimer, 1971It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962The law is established from above but becomes custom below.
—Su Zhe, c. 1100Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
—William Empson, 1928It is better to live unknown to the law.
—Irish proverbResorting to the law to resolve a dispute is a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy.
—Quentin Crisp, 1984The law’s made to take care o’ raskills.
—George Eliot, 1860A functioning police state needs no police.
—William S. Burroughs, 1959Let us have peace, but let us have liberty, law, and justice first.
—Frederick Douglass, 1878Everything that has wings is beyond the reach of the law.
—Joseph Joubert, 1791All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.
—Han Yu, c. 800However harmless a thing is, if the law forbids it, most people will think it wrong.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896War has silenced all laws.
—Lucan, c. 65We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.
—Samuel Pepys, 1661To make laws that man cannot and will not obey serves to bring all law into contempt.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1860Better no law than no law enforced.
—Danish proverbPetty laws breed great crimes.
—Ouida, 1880Necessity knows no law except to conquer.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCThe law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
—Voltairine de Cleyre, 1890If law and justice do not attain their ends, the people will be unable to move hand or foot.
—Confucius, c. 500Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
—Aleister Crowley, 1904In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins its case.
—Rwandan proverbCurse on all laws but those which love has made.
—Alexander Pope, 1717The law is far, the fist is near.
—Korean proverbThe more laws, the more lawbreakers.
—Tao Te Ching, c. 500 BCLaws, like houses, lean on one another.
—Edmund Burke, 1765Kings and fools know no law.
—German proverbWhen law can do no right,
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.
An unjust law is no law at all.
—Saint Augustine, 395Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844No law is sufficiently convenient to all.
—Roman proverbNo great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law.
—Emma Goldman, 1917