Law Quotes:

I think mistakes are the essence of science and law. It's impossible to conceive of either scientific progress or legal progress without understanding the important role of being wrong and of mistakes.

topic: Eye, Sacrifice, Law

Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.

topic: Mistake, Thinking, Law, Scientific Progress

It's every lawyer's dream to help shape the law, not just react to it.

topic: Attitude, Law, Democracy

The law is agnostic about truth. It's very skeptical of ultimate truth. That's why freedom of speech permits lies to be told.

topic: Dream, Law, Shapes

For most people, the question why be good - as distinguished from merely law abiding - is a simple one. Because God commands it, because the Bible requires it, because good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell.

topic: Lying, Law, Freedom Of Speech, Limiting Freedom Of Expression, Ultimate Truth

After more than two decades of trying to destroy the firearms rights of more than 80 million law-abiding American gun owners - and statistically failing to show any impact on violent crime - the Brady 'Campaign Against Illegal Guns' is yet another crusade whose ultimate goal is to trample the Second Amendment into dust.

topic: Simple, Law, People

- Alan Gottlieb

topic: Gun, Dust, Law, Brady, Violent Crimes

Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don't think there is any need for a law against fraud.

- Alan Greenspan

topic: Believe, Thinking, Law

It is a travesty, in my mind, for the state and local governments on the one hand to expect the Federal government to reimburse them for costs attributable to illegal immigrants, when on the other hand the State and local governments prohibit their own law enforcement and other officials from cooperating with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to locate or apprehend or expel illegal aliens.

- Alan K. Simpson

topic: Government, Hands, Law, Cooperating, Travesty

The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.

- Alan Kay

source: "The AI Business: The Commercial Uses of Artificial Intelligence". Book edited by Patrick Henry Winston and Karen Prendergast, 1984.

topic: Law, Track, Want

When I first prepared this particular talk... I realized that my usual approach is usually critical. That is, a lot of the things that I do, that most people do, are because they hate something somebody else has done, or they hate that something hasn't been done. And I realized that informed criticism has completely been done in by the web. Because the web has produced so much uninformed criticism. It's kind of a Gresham's Law-bad money drives the good money out of circulation. Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can't criticize anything.

- Alan Kay

topic: Hate, Law, People, Uninformed

The gun control mentality is ruthlessly absurd. It suggests that you pass a law which will bind law-abiding citizens â€” they won't have access to weapons. Now, we know that criminals, by definition, are people who don't obey laws. Therefore, you can pass all the laws that you want, they will still have access to these weapons, just as they have access to illegal drugs and other things right now. That means you end up with a situation in which the law-abiding folks can't defend themselves, and the crooks have all the guns.

Without the basis in written law, and without the basis in our Constitution ratified by the people, judges can't make laws. And if we accept the notion that their dictates are law, then we have not only submitted to tyranny, we have abandoned a republican form of government.

source: Alan Keyes during U.S. Senate debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters in Illinois, www.keyesarchives.com. October 21, 2004.

topic: Mean, Gun, Law, Law Abiding Citizen, Illegal Drugs

Our leaders will serve the common good with better laws and better actions only when we serve it first, by casting better votes.

topic: Law, Government, Judging

The answer to crime is not gun control, it is law enforcement and self-control.

topic: Law, Leader, Casting

My job is to persuade people to toe the line and play within the laws of the game.

source: Second Debate between Alan Keyes & Barack Obama, votesmart.org. October 21, 2004.

topic: Gun, Self, Law

- Alan Lewis

topic: Jobs, Law, Games

One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.

As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.

source: Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.25, Vintage

topic: Time, Years, Law, Converses, Across The Universe

Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain. Sexual arousal is no more than a flow of chemicals to certain nerve endings. Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum. In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.

source: Alan Lightman (2014). “The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew”, p.37, Vintage

topic: Law, Knowing, Long, Whether God Exists

Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.

topic: Sadness, Law, Brain, Arousal, Electrical

I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics. The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.

topic: Past, Law, Organization, Disintegration, Dissipation

If we are to fulfill the promise of this great Nation that everybody in our society has equal access to the law, obviously having the resources to have access to the law is extremely important.

topic: Law, Play, Ideas, Thermodynamics

- Alan Mollohan

topic: Law, Promise, Important

The shot from Laws was precise but wide.

- Alan Parry

topic: Law, Shots

The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.

- Alan Paton

topic: Law, People, Justice

Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor).

- Alan Sokal

source: Alan D. Sokal (2008). “Beyond the hoax: science, philosophy and culture”, Oxford University Press, USA

topic: Believe, Science, Law, Laws Of Physics

Look, I'm a member of the House of Lords and I'm the first to admit that I don't understand how one gets new laws through.

- Alan Sugar

topic: Law, House, Looks, House Of Lords

But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.

- Alan Watts

topic: Taken, Law, Land, Busybodies, Personal Liberty

I think the origin of all this clamour for tonality is not so much the need to sense a relationship to the tonic, as a need for familiar chords: let us be frank and say "for the triad"; and I believe I have good reason to say that just so long as a certain kind of music contains enough such triads, it causes no offence, even if in other ways it most violently clashes with the sacred laws of tonality.

- Alban Berg

source: "Schoenberg: A Critical Biography". Book by Willi Reich, p. 34, 1971.

topic: Believe, Thinking, Law, Clamour, Triads

At Yves Saint Laurent, I felt like the son-in-law - like I was part of the family, but not quite. When I was fired, I felt like the widow.

- Alber Elbaz

topic: Son, Law, Saint, Son-in-law

The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.

- Albert A. Michelson

topic: Law, Discovery, Important, Physical Science, Questioning Beliefs

The first law of sustainability: population growth and/or growth in the rate of consumption of resources cannot be sustained

- Albert Allen Bartlett

topic: Law, Growth, Firsts, Population Growth

Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

topic: Law, Democracy, Majority

From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one's passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt - that is the whole question.

topic: Law, Intuition, Definitions, Retaliation, Crime And Punishment

My profession lent itself nicely to my vocation for heights. It freed me of any bitterness towards my fellow men, who were alwaysin my debt, without my owing them anything. It placed me above the judge whom, I in turn judged, above the defendant whom I forced into gratitude.

topic: Passion, Heart, Law

How many crimes are permitted simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.

topic: Gratitude, Men, Law

We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

topic: Integrity, Law, Justice, Being Wrong

- Albert Claude

topic: Errors, Law, Play

The only security lies in individual, personal honesty, The law cannot make people honest.

- Albert E. Bowen

topic: Honesty, Lying, Law

Physics is essentially an intuitive and concrete science. Mathematics is only a means for expressing the laws that govern phenomena.

The laws of gravity cannot be held responcible for people falling in love.

topic: Mean, Law, Physics

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.

topic: Falling In Love, Law, People

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

topic: Country, Government, Law, Marijuana Prohibition, Limiting Freedom

One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem,above all other sciences,is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable,while those of all other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts.

topic: Law, Punishment, Ideas, Moral Principles, Reward And Punishment

I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. The tree outside is life... The whole of nature is life... The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.

topic: Law, Special, Facts

The conscientious objector is a revoultionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society.

topic: Simple, Cells, Law

I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.

topic: Sacrifice, Law, Important, Betterment, Personal Interest

All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them.

source: Rudolf Clausius (1867). “The Mechanical Theory of Heat: With Its Applications to the Steam-engine and to the Physical Properties of Bodies”, p.365

topic: Inspirational, Law, Understanding, Lack Of Understanding, Rationalism

My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature".

topic: Law, Principles, Links