William Blackstone Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

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“Punishments of unreasonable severity, especially where indiscriminately afflicted, have less effect in preventing crimes, and amending the manners of a people, than such as are more merciful in general, yet properly intermixed with due distinctions of severity.”
-- William Blackstone

#Punishment #People #Hell
“It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.”
-- William Blackstone

#Justice #Suffering #Fairness
“No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God”
-- William Blackstone

#Men #Law #Conform
“THIS law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.”
-- William Blackstone

#God #Country #Law
“Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.”
-- William Blackstone

#God #Two #Law
“Free men have arms; slaves do not.”
-- William Blackstone

#Men #Arms #Slave
“The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind.”
-- William Blackstone

#Men #Law #Liberty
“Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.”
-- William Blackstone

#Degrees #Assembly #Tyranny
“And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self preservation and defense.”
-- William Blackstone

#Kings #Rights #Self
“[Self-defense is] justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the laws of society.”
-- William Blackstone

#Taken #Self #Law
“No outward doors of a man's house can in general be broken open to execute any civil process; though in criminal cases the public safety supersedes the private.”
-- William Blackstone

#Home #Men #Doors
“Gaming is a kind of tacit confession that the company engaged therein do in general exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes, and therefore they cast lots to determine upon whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer.”
-- William Blackstone

#Fall #Gambling #May
“To deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament, and the thing itself is a Truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its turn, borne testimony, by either example seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits.”
-- William Blackstone

#Law #Evil #Sorcery
“The law rarely hesitates in declaring its own meaning; but the Judges are frequently puzzled to find out the meaning of others.”
-- William Blackstone

#Law #Judging
“The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength, - the floating bulwark of our island.”
-- William Blackstone

#Strength #Islands #Navy
“The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.”
-- William Blackstone

#Rights #Liberty #Protection
“That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution.”
-- William Blackstone

#Kings #Liberty #Fundamentals
“The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of . . . the sacred and inviolable rights of private property.”
-- William Blackstone

#Rights #Sacred #Thirds
“Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other.”
-- William Blackstone

#Government #Political #Excellence
“Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted. The request for the meaning of a religious belief is logically prior to the question of accepting that belief on faith or to the question of whether that belief constitutes knowledge.”
-- William Blackstone

#Religious #Atheism #Belief
“So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community.”
-- William Blackstone

#Law #Community #Violation
“Men was formed for society, and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it.”
-- William Blackstone

#Men #Living Alone #Capable
“Mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity.”
-- William Blackstone

#Humanity #Feelings #Mankind
“The Bible has always been regarded as part of the Common Law of England.”
-- William Blackstone

#Bible #Christian #Law
“In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.”
-- William Blackstone

#Men #Law #Two
“Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people.”
-- William Blackstone

#Law #People #Embodiment
“There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property.”
-- William Blackstone

#Imagination #Affection #Strikes
“The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.”
-- William Blackstone

#Liberty #Matter #Criminals
“The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband.”
-- William Blackstone

#Husband #Wife #Husband And Wife
“Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.”
-- William Blackstone

#Time #Memories #Men

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