c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Well before she became famous — or infamous, depending on where you cast your vote — Loftus's findings on memory distortion were clearly commodifiable. In the 1970s and 1980s she provided assistance to defense attorneys eager to prove to juries that eyewitness accounts are not the same as camcorders. "I've helped a lot of people," she says. Some of those people: the Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Oliver North, Ted Bundy. "Ted Bundy?" I ask, when she tells this to me. Loftus laughs. "This was before we knew he was Bundy. He hadn't been accused of murder yet." "How can you be so confident the people you're representing are really innocent?" I ask. She doesn't directly answer. She says, "In court, I go by the evidence.... Outside of court, I'm human and entitled to my human feelings. "What, I wonder are her human feelings about the letter from a child-abuse survivor who wrote, "Let me tell you what false memory syndrome does to people like me, as if you care. It makes us into liars. False memory syndrome is so much more chic than child abuse.... But there are children who tonight while you sleep are being raped, and beaten. These children may never tell because 'no one will believe them.'" "Plenty of "Plenty of people will believe them," says Loftus. Pshaw! She has a raucous laugh and a voice with a bit of wheedle in it. She is strange, I think, a little loose inside. She veers between the professional and the personal with an alarming alacrity," she could easily have been talking about herself.
— Lauren Slater, Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
I was willing to do it. I was determined to do it. By the end of the day, that had become my reaction to all of the signs of hard things ahead - a new purposefulness, hardy resolve. Everything I'd encountered so far - the law, my classmates, the great piece of discovery - had left me in deep thrall and I was bent on making sure that continued. I would have the best of it, I decided, whatever the obstacles.
— Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School
The thought had occurred to me as I was flying to Salt Lake City earlier that day that Ted Bundy might offer to let me stay in his apartment” (p. 74).(Loftus testified as a defense expert for Ted Bundy in 1976)
— Elizabeth F. Loftus, Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial
In 1996 Dorothy Mackey wrote an Op-ed piece, “Violence from comrades a fact of life for military women.” ABC News 20/ 20 did a segment on rape in the military. By November four women came forward at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, about a pattern of rape by drill sergeants. In 1997 the military finds three black drill sergeants to scapegoat. They were sent to prison and this left the commanding generals and colonels untouched to retire quietly. The Army appointed a panel to investigate sexual harassment. One of the panelists was the sergeant Major of the Army, Eugene McK
— Diane Chamberlain, Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders
Two other highly vocal FMSF Advisory Board members are Dr Elizabeth Loftus and Professor Richard Ofshe. Loftus is a respected academic psychologist whose much quoted laboratory experiment of successfully implanting a fictitious childhood memory of being lost in a shopping mall is frequently used to defend the false memory syndrome argument. In the experiment, older family members persuaded younger ones of the (supposedly) never real event. However, Loftus herself says that being lost, which almost everyone has experienced, is in no way similar to being abused. Jennifer Freyd comments on the shopping mall experiment in Betrayal Trauma (1996): “If this demonstration proves to hold up under replication it suggests both that therapists can induce false memories and, even more directly, that older family members play a powerful role in defining reality for dependent younger family members." (p. 104). Elizabeth Loftus herself was sexually abused as a child by a male babysitter and admits to blacking the perpetrator out of her memory, although she never forgot the incident. In her autobiography, Witness for the Defence, she talks of experiencing flashbacks of this abusive incident on occasion in court in 1985 (Loftus &Ketcham, 1991, p.149)In her teens, having been told by an uncle that she had found her mother's drowned body, she then started to visualize the scene. Her brother later told her that she had not found the body. Dr Loftus's successful academic career has run parallel to her even more high profile career as an expert witness in court, for the defence of those accused of rape, murder, and child abuse. She is described in her own book as the expert who puts memory on trial, sometimes with frightening implications.She used her theories on the unreliability of memory to cast doubt, in 1975, on the testimony of the only eyewitness left alive who could identify Ted Bundy, the all American boy who was one of America's worst serial rapists and killers (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991, pp. 61-91). Not withstanding Dr Loftus's arguments, the judge kept Bundy in prison. Bundy was eventually tried, convicted and executed.
— Valerie Sinason, Memory in Dispute
Leadership obeys the principle of Hooke's law to the very bone. It explains:When an elastic material is stretched, it returns to its original position. But when it's over stretched beyond its limit point, it loses its elasticity and becomes plastic, and later cuts or breaks.As a leader, in your leadership disposition, it behoves of you to acquaint yourself with this very leadership principle that edges forward. It's however, a human nature to adopt to an environment, so, leaders are humans, they tend to have this rapore with their followers which is somewhat a must needed. But the ability for such one to return and recollect to knowing his boundary makes a good leader. A phenomenon whereby he becomes drunk of platitudes, then it comes to a time where they (followers) dictate for him. And even sought and suggest plans without his consent or knowing, it has gotten to the point of plastic and break respectively.
— Richmond Akhigbe
The law is not designed to make us honorable, only bearable.
— Marie C. Malaro
Guantánamo Bay's motto: 'Safe, humane, legal, transparent detention.' Four adjectives describing one sick joke.
— Rodney Ulyate
On Wall Street, the lawyers play the same role as medics in war: They come in after the shooting is over to clean up the mess.
— Michael   Lewis
Your law always does more harm than crime, and your morality is a form of violence.
— Edward Bond, Lear
What power has law where only money rules?
— Petronius Arbiter
I don’t fundamentally understand why people give a shit about what other people put up their noses or what other people put in their veins or what other people breathe into their lungs. I mean I sort of care like if somebodies an addict it’s very destructive to people around that addict. It’s destructive to themselves. I’d like to get them help. I certainly support that which is to get that person help but, I don’t understand how people wake up and say I have to eradicate drug use across the land. “I gotta stick my nose into the business of what other people stick up their nose.”  I just find that incomprehensible. I mean, is your life so vacant and so hysterical, so empty, so void of love, care and affection? I can go play with my daughter or I can go and obsessively try and get politicians to throw people in jail for doing things I don’t like. I can’t imagine why people would be choosing option “B” but, only because they don’t have anyone who loves them or, anyone they care about. They don’t have any rich, significant, important, hobbies, relationships, artistic pursuits or anything rich enough to keep them from obsessing about what other people do or bossing and bulling what other people do. This “stick your nose in other people’s business” Is so compulsive and epidemic to human society.
— Stefan Molyneux
Of all the wicked heresies and threatening movements facing the church in our day, when Westminster Seminary finally organized their faculty to write something in unison, they gave their determined political efforts not to fight socialism, not to fight homosexuality, not abortion, not crime and mayhem in our society, not subjectivism in theology, not dispensationalism, not cultural relativism, not licentiousness, not defection from the New Testament, not defection from the Westminster Confession of Faith, all of which are out there and they can give their legitimate efforts to… boy the thing they had to write about was theonomy! How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he doesn’t see the problem?
— Greg L. Bahnsen
There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government soon would be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be destroyed. Those who made our Constitution saw this, and used the most apt and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catast
— Supreme Court of Wisconsin
Dead or alive, you will retain all your rights.
— Robert Sheckley, The Status Civilization
This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he is going to pay for it.
— Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
... I think this Law, by which I am punished, is both unreasonable in itself, and particularly severe... Polly Baker
— Benjamin Franklin
Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny...); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been refused certificates of citizenship by their Sections; who have been removed from public office by the Convention or its representatives; who belong to an aristocratic family, and have not given proof of constant and extraordinary revolutionary fervor; or who have emigrated.
— Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
I think there might be a better way,change the law
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them, both immature responses.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
In front of the law there is a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes up to the door and asks for entry. But the doorkeeper says he can't let him in to the law right now. The man thinks about this, and then he asks if he'll be able to go in later on. "That's possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not now". The gateway to the law is open as it always is, and the doorkeeper has stepped to one side, so the man bends over to try and see in. When the doorkeeper notices this he laughs and says, "If you're tempted give it a try, try and go in even though I say you can't. Careful though: I'm powerful. And I'm only the lowliest of all the doormen. But there’s a doorkeeper for each of the rooms and each of them is more powerful than the last. It's more than I can stand just to look at the third one.
— Franz Kafka, The Trial
They questioned us but they were polite because we had passports and money. I do not think they believed a word of the story and I thought it was silly but it was like a law-court. You did not want something reasonable, you wanted something technical and then stuck to it without explanations.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the perfect happiness of a state consists in the subjects obeying their prince, the prince obeying the laws, and the laws being equitable and always directed to the good of the public?
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Without law in some form, and, also, without butting up against that law, we cannot move forward easily or naturally. We have to have something hard and half-good to rebel against.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence; many even deprive themselves of it to the extent they are able, and the combination of divine and human laws is hardly enough to stop this disorder.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings
Your authority and my degeneracy are one in the same.
— Saul Bellow, Herzog
With its continued dismissal of the law of God in ethics, Fundamentalism expressed both a "spiritualized" form of situational ethics and a "Christianly submissive" statism.
— Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics
I know it when I see itJacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964), concurring op.
— Justice Potter Stewart
For those who believe executive branch officials will voluntarily interpret their surveillance authorities with restraint, I believe it is more likely that I will achieve my life-long dream of playing in the NBA.
— Ron Wyden
Start with the observation that American law is not designed to catch and punish every instance of illegal conduct. Nothing short of a totalitarian state could do that. It is designed to prosecute persons when there is a reasonable basis for believing they have committed a crime, and then to convict them when there is no reasonable doubt that they are guilty.
— Dale Carpenter, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas
1951. Law is a rule of conduct enacted by competent authority for the sake of the common good. The moral law presupposes the rational order, established among creatures for their good and to serve their final end, by the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator. All law finds its first and ultimate truth in the eternal law. Law is declared and established by reason as a participation in the providence of the living God, Creator and Redeemer of all.
— The Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church
The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.
— Russel Kirk
However, this court is constrained by law, and under the law, I can only conclude that the Government has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so cannot be compelled by this court of law to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules—a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.
— Colleen McMahon
It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that laws should not be public only when it is convenient for government officials to make them public. They should be public all the time, open to review by adversarial courts, and subject to change by an accountable legislature guided by an informed public. If Americans are not able to learn how their government is interpreting and executing the law then we have effectively eliminated the most important bulwark of our democracy. That’s why, even at the height of the Cold War, when the argument for absolute secrecy was at its zenith, Congress chose to make US surveillance laws public. Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can’t make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It’s Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America.
— Ron Wyden
Authorities this broad give the national security bureaucracy the power to scrutinize the personal lives of every law-abiding American. Allowing that to continue is a grave error that demonstrates a willful ignorance of human nature. Moreover, it demonstrates a complete disregard for the responsibilities entrusted to us by the Founding Fathers to maintain robust checks and balances on the power of any arm of the government. That obviously raises some very serious questions. What happens to our government, our civil liberties and our basic democracy if the surveillance state is allowed to grow unchecked? As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority. Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.
— Ron Wyden
It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Friday
This is England," he explained. "Tell someone it's a procedure, and they'll believe you. The pointless procedure is one of our great natural resources.
— Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath
[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.
— Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
A computer search would have given me a list of pertinent cases, but without that I had to read everything. That is harder by far, but you end up learning a lot more. I was forced to remember cases because making copies of everything was too expensive. Keeping cases in your head is good, too, because cases are like puzzle pieces floating around in your mind, and sometimes, in moments of creativity, they fall into place and form a picture. If they were words on a screen that you could pull up anytime you wished, that phenomenon wouldn't happen as easily.
— Shon Hopwood, Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption
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.
— Philip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
It is better to exist unknow to the law.--Irish Proverb
— Dorien Kelly, The Last Bride in Ballymuir
The political reputation of Servius rests upon his organization of society according to a fixed scale of rank and fortune. He originated the census, a measure of the highest utility to a state destined, as Rome was, to future preeminence; for by means of its public service, in peace as well as in war, could thence forward be regularly organized on the basis of property; every man's contribution could be in proportion to his means.
— Livy, The Early History of Rome:
Believing, as they now did, that the heavenly powers took part in human affairs, they became so much absorbed in the cultivation of religion and so deeply imbued with the sense of their religious duties, that the sanctity of an oath had more power to control their lives than the fear of punishment for lawbreaking.
— Livy, The Early History of Rome:
Although distortion of the past is widespread, the most common travesty is one of omission, wherein populist leaders neglect to mention the crimes committed by their own side or recollect them in such a way that evades accepting full responsibility. That politicians are so able to evoke historical arguments in these ways results from a prior failure of the society to engage in a full and frank encounter with past wrongdoings.
— Richard Ashby Wilson, Writing History in International Criminal Trials
What is this so-called 'employment flexibility'? It simply means that employers, in their quest to reduce costs whilst trying to meet the demands of globalisation, are disregarding the traditional job boundaries – often to the detriment of the unskilled, non-standard worker. Employers use non-standard workers to avoid restrictive labour laws and collective bargaining restraints. In addition, the practice provides them with more flexibility.
— E.S. Fourie
Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.
— Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.
— Avicenna
When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.
— Aristotle, Politics
(The law) is like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain’t ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone’s to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind.
— Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
When the subject is sacred, proud and clever men may come to think that the outsiders who don't know it are not merely inferior to them in skill but lower in God's eyes; as the priests said, 'All that rabble who are not experts in the Torah are accursed.' and as this pride increases, the 'subject' or study which confers such privilege will grow more and more complicated, the list of things forbidden will increase, till to get through a single day without supposed sin becomes like an elaborate step-dance, and this horrible network breeds self-righteousness in some and haunting anxiety in others.
— C.S. Lewis
The most important moments in a trial are often not seen by a jury. That is because it's one of the judge's main responsibilities to screen what they see and hear, lest they be prejudiced. It's the "you can't unring a bell" theory; once the jury hears something they shouldn't have heard, th trial is forever tainted. If the damage is great enough, a mistrial is the result. Judges basically prefer nuclear war to mistrials.
— David Rosenfelt, Leader of the Pack
The views of the Courts in regard to imprisonment have however undergone modification in the last ten years. Imprisonment is seen more and more as a harsh and drastic punishment to be reserved for callous and impenitent characters. We wish to adopt a more enlightened approach in which the probable effect of incarceration upon the life of the accused person and those near to her is carefully weighed.
— V.G. Hiemstra
In times of trouble leniency becomes crime.
— Azhar
The difference between the past and the present is that individual freedom and security no longer fall to be protected solely through the D vehicle of common-law maxims and presumptions which may be altered or repealed by statute, but are now protected by entrenched constitutional provisions which neither the Legislature nor the Executive may abridge. It would accordingly be improper for us to hold constitutional a system which, as Sachs J has noted, confers on creditors the power to consign the person of an impecunious debtor to prison at will and without the interposition at the crucial time of a judicial officer.
— Pius Langa
What is truth? Truth is ever-changing law. We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours? (Crucify him! Crucify him!)
— Ponctious Pilate
My conclusions, on this point, are as follows: when the Law Commission says committal of judgment debtors is an anomaly that cannot be justified and should be abolished; when it is common cause that there is a general international move away from imprisonment for civil debt, of which the present committal proceedings are an adapted relic; when such imprisonment has been abolished in South Africa, save for its contested form as contempt of court in the magistrate's court; when the clauses concerned have already been interpreted by the Courts as restrictively as possible, without their constitutionally offensive core being eviscerated; when other tried and tested methods exist for recovery of debt from those in a position to pay; when the violation of the fundamental right to personal freedom is manifest, and the procedures used must inevitably possess a summary character if they are to be economically worthwhile to the creditor, then the very institution of civil imprisonment, however it may be described and however well directed its procedures might be, in itself must be regarded as highly questionable and not a compelling claimant for survival.
— Albie Sachs
Severability is an important concept in the context of the relations between this Court and Parliament; like 'reading down', it is an instrument of judicial restraint which reduces the danger of producing an overbroad judicial reaction to overbroad legislation.
— Albie Sachs
The bad parts of the statute are not judicially severable, I consider, from the rest of its provisions that deal with imprisonment. Their roots are entangled too tenaciously in the surrounding soil for a clean extraction to be feasible. The conclusion to which I accordingly come is that we are left with no option but to declare those provisions as a whole to be constitutionally invalid on account of their objectionable overbreadth.
— John Didcott
If the good is not dependent on the bad and can be separated from it, one gives effect to the good that remains after the separation if it still gives effect to the main objective.
— Johann Kriegler
Laws should act as the lower limits of acceptable behavior, not as a guide to noble action.
— George Hammond
Outside my bike, never has anything important in my life been just mine." My body stilled, so did my heart, and my eyes locked with his. He started moving again, slowly, deeply and he kept talking. "Always castoffs, leftovers, used, sometimes even food from the dumpsters." My heart started beating again, only to trip over itself; my breath came fast, not only from what was happening to my body but what he was saying. "Vance-" His lips came to mine, his hands moved out of my hair and went to the side of my face and he stared in my eyes, pressing deep inside. "Mine," he muttered, his deep voice hoarse, that fierce undercurrent there. His tone caused a shiver to run through me, straight through to my soul. Then he kissed me.
— Kristen Ashley, Rock Chick Renegade
NC passed law against global warming science, therefore it's not happening. So I'm ignoring Twitter's 140-character limit, so it's not happ
— Stephen Colbert
[you’ll acquire] A certain amount of cynicism. This business works on you. When you were in law school you had some noble idea what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an advocate for your client’s principles. Then after you practice for six months you realize you were nothing but hired guns. Mouthpieces for sale to the highest bidder, available to anybody, any crook, any sleazebag with enough money to pay your outrageous fees. Nothing shocks you. It’s supposed to be an honorable profession, but you’ll meet so many crooked lawyers you’ll want to quit and find an honest job. Yeah Mitch, you’ll get cynical. And it’s sad, really.
— John Grisham, The Firm
Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.
— Plato
Our modern world defined God as a ‘religious complex’ and laughed at the Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED. Then, through the laughter came the shattering thunder of the World War. And now a blood-drenched, bitter world — no longer laughing — cries for a way out. There is but one way out. It existed before it was engraven upon Tablets of Stone. It will exist when stone has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not rules to obey as a personal favor to God. They are the fundamental principles without which mankind cannot live together. They are not laws — they are The Law.
— Cecil B. DeMille
Old radicals never changed. They just got law degrees and updated their bag of tricks.
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Fancy Pants
Fight vigorously against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep. And this you may do by inveighing against the laws and lawgivers, and yet at the same time observing these laws with the weak, lest they be offended, until they shall themselves recognize the tyranny, and understand their own liberty.
— Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty
The relevant question is not whether back then a few extraordinary individuals could overcome a system strongly weighted against them or whether today an admittedly far greater number requiring far less talent can succeed. The real question is whether it's harder for the people in this audience to succeed be they extraordinary, average, or below average. If it is, and I think it obvious that it is, then that's untenable in a country that purports to provide equal opportunity for all. Now of course you'll dispute my claim that it is more difficult to succeed for them. You say the battle's over. I say not only is it not over but you yourself are stationed on the frontline of the battle and have been all these years. This room and the criminal justice system as a whole is the frontline. This is where modern-day segregation lives on.
— Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity
It has always struck me that one of the readiest ways of estimating a country's regard for law is to notice what arms the officers of the law are carrying: in England it is little batons, in France swords, in many countries revolvers, and in Russia the police used to have artillery.
— Lord Dunsany, The Curse Of The Wise Woman
No one was above the law, and no one was below its protection.
— Mona Hodgson, The Bride Wore Blue
The Defendant: I am pleading guilty your honors but I'm doing it because I think it would be a waste of money to have a trial over five dollars worth of crack. What I really need is a drug program because I want to turn my life around and the only reason I was doing what I was doing on the street was to support my habit. The habit has to be fed your honors as you know and I believe in working for my money. I could be out there robbing people but I'm not and I've always worked even though I am disabled. And not always at this your honors, I used to be a mail carrier back in the day but then I started using drugs and that was all I wanted to do. So I'm taking this plea to save the city of New York and the taxpayers money because I can't believe that the DA, who I can see is a very tall man, would take to trial a case involving five dollars worth of crack, especially knowing how much a trial of that nature would cost. But I still think that I should get a chance to do a drug program because I've never been given that chance in any of my cases and the money that will be spent keeping me in jail could be spent addressing my real problem which is that I like, no need, to smoke crack every day and every chance I get, and if I have to point people to somebody who's selling the stuff so I can get one dollar and eventually save up enough to buy a vial then smoke it immediately and start saving up for my next one that I'll gladly do that, and I'll do it even though I know it could land me in jail for years because the only thing that matters at that moment is getting my next vial and I am not a Homo-sapiens-sexual your honors but if I need money to buy crack I will suck. . . .
— Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity
The first requirement of a sound body of law is, that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community, whether right or wrong.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Common Law
All our hope rests upon the possibility of a change of the laws which concern it, so that only rape or the comission of public offence, when this can be proved at the same time, shall be punishable.
— Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis: The Case Histories
Law and order are the medicine of the politic body and when the politic body gets sick, medicine must be administered.
— B.R. Ambedkar
Fabre looked up, his mobile face composed. "Good-bye," he said. "Georges-Jacques--study law. Law is a weapon.
— Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
No, the Boss corrected, I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. ... but I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different.
— Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
I may wish to return to my home in England, and I stand in New York, but ever since I was born I have been bound to this earth by a law that I have never been able to break--the law of gravity. I am told, however, that there is another law, a higher law, the law of aero-dynamics, and if only I will be willing to commit myself in total trust to this new law, then this new law will set me free from the old law. By faith I step into the plane, I sit back in the rest of faith, and as those mighty engines roar into life, I discover that the new law of aero-dynamics sets me free from the law of gravity.
— W. Ian Thomas
I'm afraid your literary prizes don't give you any jurisdiction in this particular instance, sir.
— Lizzie K. Foley, Remarkable
In 1231, Pope Gregory ordered the Dominicans to take charge of papal courts and decisions and so prevent mob rule and guarantee that the accused received a fair trial and the right of defence. This was the foundation of the Inquisition, and it was a move to organize, control, and limit violence, disruption, and division. Of course, it often failed and even achieved the opposite of its stated and original purpose, but it's surprising how often in an age of casual and brutal violence a relative moderation and legality was achieved. Civil law was far harsher than canon law, demanding confiscation of a heretic's property and usually death, something the Church had tried to prevent for generations.
— Michael Coren, Why Catholics are Right
I pretended I had urgent business at the prosecutor's table which, in one of The System's obvious tells, was always millimeters from the jury box.
— Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity
It was strange to see the keenness with which men had tried to order, constrain, and systematize human passions, jealousy, rage, violent death, accusations. That was the justice system (...): the absurd pretension that human nature could be dominated by the power of the law. Reducing it all to a summary of a few pages, organizing the facts, judging it, archiving it, and forgetting it. That simple. And yet in the silence of that place you could hear the murmur of the written words, of the key players, the screams of the victims, the hatred never forgotten by either party, the pain that never went away.
— Víctor del Árbol
In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Nobody's sane above the law.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
The problem: If you've an antique for sale, then, sad to relate, the world isn't your oyster. It's not that easy. Even if somebody gives you the National Gallery, your options are still very, very limited. Okay, you can sell the Old Masters, set up a trust, buy your favorite brewery. But that's strictly it. You're limited by honesty on one hand and law - that hobble of sanity - on the other.
— Jonathan Gash, Jade Woman
The attempt to understand morality in the legalistic terms of a natural law is ancient but is now mostly associated with the formulation given it by Thomas Aquinas in the late thirteenth century. All earlier natural law is commonly seen as leading up to Aquinas’s paradigmatic version, whereas later natural law is understood as deriving from it.
— Knud Haakonsen
Race, gender, religion, sexuality, we are all people and that's it. We're all people. We're all equal.
— Connor Franta
It makes a big difference in your life when you stay positive.
— Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding
It’s okay. It may not seem like it right now, but you are going to be fine. I know it’s scary, but don’t be afraid. You are who you are, and you should love that person, and I don’t want anyone to have to go through 22 years of their life afraid to accept that.
— Connor Franta
Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.
— Michael Jordan
But you will admit that it is a very good thing to be alive.
— L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz
We are not as frail as the strings would make us believe.
— John Green, Paper Towns
Don't sweat the small stuff.
— Richard Carlson, The Big Book of Small Stuff: 100 of the Best Inspirations from Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
Your thoughts, your words are reflections of who you truly are and who you could become. Be careful what you think of and of what you speak of for these can manifest in your life. So why not throw away all those negativity and just remain open to positivity?" - Elizabeth's Quotes
— Elizabeth E. Castillo
Life's a shit sandwich, my ass. Life's a polka and don't you forget it!
— Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone
Happiness is loving your enemies.
— Charles M. Schulz
Restrictions and writing shouldn't mix. Let your mind be open. Let it be a creative canvas.
— Lauren Hammond
Don't apologize for doing what you thought was best. All you can ever do, is your best. Even if that doesn't work out, don't diminish your efforts. Don't diminish your intent. Don't apologize for being human. Don't take on guilt that isn't yours. We are all growing, learning and evolving. Take the lesson forward.
— Akiroq Brost
Do not focus your gaze on things that are wrong, for what you see, slowly begins to penetrate you. You are addicted to fixing your eyes on the wrong; you pay attention only to what is wrong inside you. The angry man concentrates on his anger, and how to get rid of it. Though he wants to get rid of the anger, he is actually concentrating on that white line of anger within him; the more he concentrates the more he is hypnotized by it.Don’t worry! Everybody is! Don’t focus your eyes on the anger, but concentrate on compassion. Concentrate on what is right. As the right gets more and more energy, the strength of the wrong gets weaker and weaker. Ultimately it will disappear. This happens because energy is one; you cannot use it in two ways. If you have utilized your energy in becoming peaceful, you would have no energy for restlessness. All your energy has moved towards peace, and if you have had a taste of peace and serenity, why bother to become restless? You can maintain your restlessness only if you have never known the flavour of serenity. You can dive into the pleasures of the world only if you have not tasted the divine.
— Osho, Bliss: Living beyond happiness and misery
Dreams are not just goals to lead us to something better. Dreams also help us become better..today.Dreaming a new dream can simply be dreaming of a better you.
— Machel Shull, HAPPY SOUL: 10 Steps to Happiness
Mrs Allan says that whenever we think of anything that is a trial to use we should also think of something nice that we can set over against it. If you are slightly too plump, you've got the dearest dimples; and if I have a freckled nose the shape of it is all right.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means that it's going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming.
— Unknown
As human beings we can't stop the flow of time, but we can choose to do something constructive with the time that we have.
— D. Allen Miller, Scarlet Tears
Put love in everything you do. If you can't, then maybe you shouldn't do.
— Carina Aguilar
By tapping into flowers and their elixirs, we have a method at our fingertips that helps us be our happiest, clearest, and most loving selves. With this book I invite you to catalyze your own personal Flowerevolution and create a worldwide ripple effect of positivity—transforming the world from the inside out.
— Katie Hess, Flowerevolution: Blooming into Your Full Potential with the Magic of Flowers
When you focus on problems, you'll have more Problems. When you focus on possibilities, you'll have more oppertunities.
— Unknown
She felt a sense that things were in order, the way they were meant to be, and that even if they tumbled down once in a while, in the end they would come back together again.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
Some of us fail to find the good in the bad because resentment is a shortcut to resolution.
— Jamie George, Poets and Saints: Eternal Insight, Extravagant Love, Ordinary People
Love is at the very root of having a positive attitude.
— Mark Andrew Poe, The Smart Scary House
Pain is only temporary, but victory lasts for ever.
— Unknown
Being a positive person doesn't mean you never have negative thoughts. It just means you don't allow them space to take root and grow to control your life.
— Lorri Faye
What do you call "positive"and what do you call "negative" ?Petra Hermans
— Petra Hermans
You may appreciate positivity when you accept and understand negativity.Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans September 17, 2016AmenGod
— Petra Hermans
Say 'Not Yet.' It's best to leave your options open.
— Michele Jaffe, Minders
I must always be positive no matter what happens on the outside. I have positivity inside and even though this is not an eternal state of mind, it’s my daily attitude in life.
— Carol Burge
Think positive, Butch.
— Horace Dade Ashton
The past is gone. My life is a miracle! With gratitude to God, I am still here to remember and to tell what happened to me during the Holocaust of WWII.
— Leah Cik Roth, My Eyes Looking Back at Me: Insight Into a Survivor's Soul
With our friends, heartbreak is just a piece of cake.
— Joselle Anne Gayanes
Inner positivity requires when you are trying to achieve your goal!!
— Gargi Vyas
POSITIVITY is one of the most attractive scents you can wear ! If you've been running around all day today - perspiring lots from all your challenging work - be sure to spray on some Positivity Scent (spritz, spritz!) before you head on home!
— Angie karan
Don't crack anything unless it's a smile, or an Easter egg :)
— Elaine S
(after Quigley explains that the ghosts have been feeding off of their misery)Toma: So, what, we should think happy thoughts?!Duane: That is not a talent of mine.
— Ashley Cope, Unsounded - Volume 1: The Zombie & The Brat
Life is full of drama, competition, difficulties, and God knows what else. But that shouldn't rule out the love, happiness and joy we feel by being around the things we love and the people who love us.
— Zainab T. Khan, A Bucket full of Awesome
Mental and emotional freedom is not the denial of truth — it’s the recognition that truth isn't something we need to run from or be afraid of.
— T.K. Coleman, Freedom Without Permission: How to Live Free in a World That Isn't
It is given that we'll face difficulties and breaking points in our lives but with them we'll also have lots of positive moments. We only have to recognize them and let them be. We shouldn't burden those few positive moments with the negatives in our lives or we're going to just ruin them.
— Zainab T. Khan, A Bucket full of Awesome
Waves of positivity and possibilities send tiny ripples of hope to wash away the walls of negativity.
— Debasish Mridha
Life is a series of moments and moments are always changing, just like thoughts, negative and positive.
— Cecelia Ahern
Someone once said that there are always flowers for those who want to find flowers. I think that's true. But I also think that there are always cakes for those who want to find cakes.
— C. JoyBell C.
Do not judge me for the many things I do, but rather judge yourself for that which you do not.
— George "GM64" Mercado
It is our thoughts, actions and reactions that manifest our future.
— George "GM64" Mercado
My greatness shall never be measured by my actions or accomplishments, but rather by those of my son's guided by my teachings.
— George "GM64" Mercado
In order to become great we must allows others to become great before us, and not be envious of their greatness but rather rejoice in it. So that when we become great, there will be others who shall rejoice in ours.
— George "GM64" Mercado
Pain reminds us that we are alive and breathing, that we still have the strength within to fight
— George "GM64" Mercado
Great people will always be mocked by those who feel smaller than them. Yet a lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey. A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker. Whenever you should question your self-worth, always remember the lotus flower. Even though it plunges to life from beneath the mud, it does not allow the dirt that surrounds it to affect its growth or beauty. Do not allow any negativity or ugliness in your surroundings destroy your confidence or affect your growth. Always be confident and courageous with your truths and the directions set out by your heart. It is very normal for one ugly weed to not want to stand alone.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Be positive. Now attract every negative person and neutralize them.
— Debasish Mridha
To have a positive influence on someone's life is a blessing.
— Unarine Ramaru
Success shouldn't be revenge or a way to overwhelm the naysayers. If that is your reason, you are far from being content.
— Unarine Ramaru
Mother Teresa once said, "Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted are the greatest poverty." To this I will add: Please believe that one single positive dream is more important than a thousand negative realities.
— Adeline Yen Mah
Look for a GOOD NEWS story to tell. This is much better than gossip in increasing morale.
— yel
Oh don’t be such a fuss pot,” said the fairy, “or I’ll call you Fussy Pants, instead of Silly Pants!
— Julie B.  Campbell, Finding Manda's Sunshine
During any experience placed before us, we can stay in alignment with positivity, truth, and goodness by asking the question: What would honor and love do here?
— Molly Friedenfeld