The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

To rule a country of a thousand chariots, there must be reverent attention to business, and sincerity; economy in expenditure, and love for men; and the employment of the people at the proper seasons.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

I think governments can’t do much.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

Under the Timber and Stone Act of 1878, which might well have been called the ‚Dust and Ashes Act,‘ any citizen of the United States could take up one hundred and sixty acres of timber land and, by paying two dollars and a half an acre for it, obtain title.

I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.

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

I get very little sleep when the court is sitting.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

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.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.

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.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

That government is best which governs least.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Finality is not the language of politics.

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

It was an act of patriotism when we worked to pass a law allowing the prosecution of federal hate crimes in the name of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

In the 21st century, the countries that thrive will be the ones where citizens know their voices will be heard because the institutions are transparent.

Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

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.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

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

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.

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

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

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

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

Justice Scalia and I served together on the D.C. Circuit. So his votes are not surprising to me. What I like about him is that he’s very funny and very smart.

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

I love being in a courtroom.

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.

We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their healthcare.

I repeat… that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

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.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

Ours is a nation of laws: of citizens who live under them and for the citizens who enforce them. So, to a community in Ferguson that is rightly hurting and looking for answers, let me call once again for us to seek some understanding rather than simply holler at each other. Let’s seek to heal rather than to wound each other.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘