The best interpreter of the law is custom.

The safety of the people shall be the highest law.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

In most communities it is illegal to cry ‚fire‘ in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

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

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

When I would hear the rabbi tell about some miracle such as a bush whose leaves were shaking but there wasn’t any wind, I would try to fit the miracle into the real world and explain it in terms of natural phenomena.

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we’re children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they’re scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.

I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

Nobody is above the law. Imagine if there allegations against Modi and he is the Prime Minister. Should the case not be pursued just because he has become the PM. It should not be so that it should be stopped. I am not above the law.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‚within the limits of the law‘ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.

On the whole, we think of our consumers – other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it’s better to have it clearer than confusing.

It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there is no offense.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

The label ‚liberal‘ or ‚conservative,‘ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‚Iolanthe.‘ It goes, ‚Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.‘ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

Even Gaddafi’s adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enroll in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like ‚shooting an unarmed child,‘ when that ‚child‘ was beating him bloody.

More law, less justice.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don’t have executions.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

I love being in a courtroom.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.