“
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...
”
”
Thomas Jefferson (Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom)
“
There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)
“
When someone you love dies, people ask you how you're doing, but they don't really want to know. They seek affirmation that you're okay, that you appreciate their concern, that life goes on and so can they. Secretly they wonder when the statute of limitations on asking expires (its three months, by the way. Written or unwritten, that's about all the time it takes for people to forget the one thing that you never will).
”
”
Sarah Ockler (Twenty Boy Summer)
“
What is the statute of limitations on feeling guilty for cheating on a ghost?
”
”
Sarah Ockler (Twenty Boy Summer)
“
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.
”
”
Emma Goldman (Marriage and Love)
“
Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.
”
”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
“
More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of fifty states statutes protecting the rights of unborn children. Abortion on demand now takes the lives of up to 1.5 million unborn children a year. Human life legislation ending this tragedy will some day pass the Congress, and you and I must never rest until it does. Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected.
”
”
Ronald Reagan
“
WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.
”
”
Walt Whitman
“
In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.
”
”
Abraham Lincoln
“
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.
[Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a 'a plain die or cube ... surmounted by an Obelisk' with 'the following inscription, and not a word more…because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.' It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance]
”
”
Thomas Jefferson
“
Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights - the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
Cincinatti was where I learned that running away from your problems has a three-month statute of limitations, a lesson I have found repeatedly to be true. Three months is still a first impression -- of a city, of other people, of yourself in that place. But there comes a point when you can no longer hide who you are, and the reactions of others become all too familiar...
”
”
Stacy Pershall (Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl)
“
A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2))
“
You took my Lotus!”
Sissy choked on her champagne, and Ronnie started looking for the exits or law enforcement with arrest warrants.
Lord, what is the statute of limitations again?
”
”
Shelly Laurenston (The Mane Attraction (Pride, #3))
“
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein
“
Obedience is the virtue that determines whether a person is either a servant or a rebel. Life of integrity is built on obedience of God's statutes and nothing else.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor
“
When three liberals get together they form a new party; that is their idea of individualism. They never join a bowling club without introducing as part of the 'agenda' an 'amendment of the statutes.
”
”
Oswald Spengler (Prussianism and Socialism)
“
Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.
”
”
Emma Goldman
“
A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall heed My ordinances and do them. Ezekiel 36:26,27
”
”
Joyce Meyer (Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind)
“
Care for us! True, indeed! They ne'er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Coriolanus)
“
Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals? If so, do we really believe that our notions of self-government and individual freedom, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, apply to everybody? Or are we instead committed, in practice if not in statute, to reserving those things for a privileged few?
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
There's no statute of limits on a wounded heart
”
”
Miho Obana
“
He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, PEDE CLAUDO, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
“
I should hang ten thousand that dared to rise against the law, and an ocean of salt tears could not melt the resolution of the statutes.
”
”
Arthur Miller (The Crucible)
“
Statute books and golden rules were made to fetter slaves and fools.
”
”
Ragnar Redbeard (Might is Right, or The Survival of the Fittest)
“
In one sense, at any rate, it is more valuable to read bad literature than good literature. Good literature may tell us the mind of one man; but bad literature may tell us the mind of many men. A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. It does much more than that, it tells us the truth about its readers; and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public document. A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our day, might learn from good literature nothing except the power to appreciate good literature. But from bad literature he might learn to govern empires and look over the map of mankind.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (Heretics)
“
Isn't there a statute of limitation on playing the poor abused victim?
”
”
Bill Willingham (Fables, Vol. 1: Legends in Exile)
“
Leases, writes, statutes, all are written to be read and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
“
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
...
This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died.
”
”
John F. Kennedy
“
Like most Negroes in America, he lived in a nation with statutes and decrees that consigned him as an equal but not equal, his life bound by a set of rules and regulations in matters of equality that largely did not apply to him. His world, his wants, his needs were of little value to anyone but himself.
”
”
James McBride (The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store)
“
When Wyatt writes, his lines fledge feathers, and unfolding this plumage they dive below their meaning and skim above it. They tell us that the rules of power and the rules of war are the same, the art is to deceive; and you will deceive, and be deceived in your turn, whether you are an ambassador or a suitor. Now, if a man's subject is deception, you are deceived if you think you grasp his meaning. You close your hand as it flies away. A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2))
“
The victims recede from view. Their rhythm is off, their confidence drained. They’re laden with phobias and made tentative by memory. Divorce and drugs beset them. Statutes of limitations expire. Evidence kits are tossed for lack of room. What happened to them is buried, bright and unmoving, a coin at the bottom of a pool. They do their best to carry on.
”
”
Michelle McNamara (I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer)
“
As is well known, what characterizes both the Fascist and Nazi regimes is that they allowed the existing constitutions (the Albertine Statute and the Weimar Constitution, respectively) to subsist, and according to a paradigm that has been acutely defined as "dual state" - they placed beside the legal constitution a second structure, often not legally formalized, that could exist alongside the other because of the state of exception.
”
”
Giorgio Agamben (State of Exception)
“
These marvels were great and comfortable ones, but in the old England there was a greater still. The weather behaved itself.
In the spring all the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang; in the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed; in the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory; and in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.
”
”
T.H. White (The Sword in the Stone (The Once and Future King, #1))
“
Far from being laws to protect women, antipolygamy statutes may really do more to protect men.
”
”
Matt Ridley
“
That doesn't invalidate it, Angel said. There's no statute of limitations on pain.
”
”
Duncan Ralston (Woom)
“
And in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.
”
”
T.H. White (The Sword in the Stone (The Once and Future King, #1))
“
Ideas and statutes that live only in disembodied intellect are fragile, easily manipulated by both sides in a debate. This is as true of European "sustainability" regulations as it is for Amazonian súmac káusai removed from its forest home. Knowledge gained through extended bodily relationship with the forest, including the forest's human communities, is more robust.
... There is truth that cannot be accessed through intellect alone, especially intellect that is not aware of local ecological variations.
”
”
David George Haskell (The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors)
“
The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.
”
”
Frederick Douglass (Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass)
“
Penalties were established for refusal to work, for leaving a place of employment to seek higher pay, and for the offer of higher pay by employers. Proclaimed when Parliament was not sitting, the ordinance was reissued in 1351 as the Statute of Laborers.
”
”
Barbara W. Tuchman (A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century)
“
The statute of limitations . . . She’s put it behind her. Or I hope she has.” She’d have put it behind her, Eve thought, but it was always behind you. In a corner, in the dark. Squatting there behind you and chuckling in its throat.
”
”
J.D. Robb (Brotherhood in Death (In Death, #42))
“
By the late eighteenth century Britain’s statute books were plump with capital offences; you could be hanged for any of 200 acts, including, notably, ‘impersonating an Egyptian’.
”
”
Bill Bryson (In a Sunburned Country)
“
Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards.
”
”
John Milton (Areopagitica)
“
He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Other Stories)
“
Many of the sisters were Black and poor and from D.C., where every crime is a violation of a federal statute. They were beautiful sisters, serving outrageous sentences for minor offenses.
”
”
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
“
All the ancient churches were churches representative of spiritual things; the rites, and also the statutes, according to which their worship was established, consisted of pure correspondence.
”
”
Emanuel Swedenborg (True Christian Religion, Vol 1)
“
Că s-a spus totul, că nu mai e nimic de spus — o ştim, o simţim. Dar ceea ce simţim mai puţin e că această evidenţă conferă limbajului un statut straniu, chiar îngrijorător, care-l eliberează. Cuvintele sunt în sfîrşit salvate, pentru că au încetat să trăiască.
”
”
Emil M. Cioran (The Trouble With Being Born)
“
They're not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it's pervasive. It's not as though, well, there's this little Federal sphere and it's only a tax question. It's as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You're saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.
”
”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“
The anti-Trump movement is a conspiracy by the powerful and connected to overturn the will of the American people. Among the co-conspirators are FBI officials illegally exonerating their favorite candidate of violating well-defined federal criminal statutes, first to help her get elected and then to frame Donald J. Trump for “Russia collusion” that never happened.
”
”
Jeanine Pirro (Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy)
“
Above all, the revolutionary group must divest itself of the forms of power—statutes, hierarchies, property, prescribed opinions, fetishes, paraphernalia, official etiquette—and of the subtlest as well as the most obvious of bureaucratic and bourgeois traits that consciously and unconsciously reinforce authority and hierarchy.
”
”
Murray Bookchin (Post-Scarcity Anarchism)
“
In Leipzig [in the 14th century], the university found it necessary to promulgate a rule against throwing stones at the professors. As late as 1495, a German statute explicitly forbade anyone associated with the university from drenching freshmen with urine.
”
”
Leonard Mlodinow (Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace)
“
What statute was violated, if any, in turning a man exactly ninety degrees from everything else?
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
“
Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart.
”
”
Anonymous (The One Year Bible NIV)
“
Leases, writs, statutes, all are written to be read, and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
“
If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute; the intention of the People to the intention of their agents.
”
”
Alexander Hamilton (The Federalist & The Anti-Federalist Papers: Complete Collection: Including the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Important Documents by the Founding Fathers & more)
“
Blood hath been shed ere now, i'the olden time,
Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murders have been performed
Too terrible for the ear. The times has been
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end. But now they rise again
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools. This is more strange
Than such a murder is.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
“
There’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld cities.
At least, there’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.
And it’s wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way.
Poets long ago gave up trying to describe the city. Now the more cunning ones try to excuse it. They say, well, maybe it is smelly, maybe it is overcrowded, maybe it is a bit like Hell would be if they shut the fires off and stabled a herd of incontinent cows there for a year, but you must admit that it is full of sheer, vibrant, dynamic life. And this is true, even though it is poets that are saying it. But people who aren't poets say, so what? Mattresses tend to be full of life too, and no one writes odes to them. Citizens hate living there and, if they have to move away on business or adventure or, more usually, until some statute of limitations runs out, can’t wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more. They put stickers on the backs of their carts saying "Anhk-Morpork—Loathe It or Leave It.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
“
There are two types of laws, those that are just and those that are unjust. A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law...Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“
At one time the Irish had been forbidden by English law to educate their children, to own a horse worth more than five pounds, to play the Irish pipes, to wear the color green… the list went on and on. Most of the oppressive statutes were no longer enforced, but the shamed submission they had engendered remained.
”
”
Morgan Llywelyn (1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion (Irish Century Book 1))
“
...Ethical laws cannot be thought of as emanating originally merely from the will of this superior being as statutes, which, had he not first commanded them, would perhaps not be binding, for then they would not be ethical laws and the duty proper to them would not be the free duty of virtue but the coercive duty of law.
”
”
Immanuel Kant (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone)
“
From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting the petty tyranny of distrustful vengeance. In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches. The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis.
In our own times, the old blunt instruments have again been put to work. The States have followed in the footsteps of the Federalists and have put Alien and Sedition Acts upon their statute books. An epidemic of loyalty oaths has spread across the Nation until no town or village seems to feel secure until its servants have purged themselves of all suspicion of non-conformity by swearing to their political cleanliness.
Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution.
We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. The legislative investigation, designed and often exercised for the achievement of high ends, has too frequently been used by the Nation and the States as a means for effecting the disgrace and degradation of private persons. Unscrupulous demagogues have used the power to investigate as tyrants of an earlier day used the bill of attainder.
The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime. Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify "togetherness" when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others.
In listing these abuses I do not mean to condemn our central effort to protect the Nation's security. The dangers that surround us have been very great, and many of our measures of vigilance have ample justification. Yet there are few among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards excess of caution.
”
”
John F. Kennedy
“
It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him. He has even become fond of it and for the time being is incapable of employing his own intelligence, because he has never been allowed to make the attempt. Statutes and formulas, these mechanical tools of a serviceable use, or rather misuse, of his natural faculties, are the ankle-chains of a continuous immaturity. Whoever threw it off would make an uncertain jump over the smallest trench because he is not accustomed to such free movement. Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind.
”
”
Immanuel Kant
“
Hitler fantasized that the United States so fully shared his racist views that it would ultimately side with the Third Reich. Nazi writers regularly pointed to America’s anti-Asian immigration quotas and bigoted Jim Crow laws to deflect foreign criticism of their own discriminatory statutes. Even the German quest for Lebensraum found its model in America’s westward expansion, during which, as Hitler noted, U.S. soldiers and frontiersmen “gunned down . . . millions of Redskins.
”
”
Madeleine K. Albright (Fascism: A Warning)
“
The famous words of Emma Lazarus on the pedestal of the Statute of Liberty read: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Until 1921 this was an accurate picture of our society. Under present law it would be appropriate to add: "as long as they come from Northern Europe, are not too tired or too poor or slightly ill, never stole a loaf of bread, never joined any questionable organization, and can document their activities from the past two years.
”
”
John F. Kennedy (A Nation of Immigrants)
“
Tu vas voir, le regard des gens sur un mec handicapé se fait en plusieurs temps. Quand les gens te rencontrent la première fois, tu n’es rien d’autre qu’un handicapé. Tu n’as pas d’histoire, pas de particularités, ton handicap est ta seule identité. Ensuite, s’ils prennent un peu le temps, ils vont découvrir une facette de ton caractère. Ils verront alors si tu as de l’humour, si tu es dépressif… Enfin, ils verront presque avec surprise que tu peux avoir une vraie personnalité qui s’ajoute à ton statut d’handicapé .
”
”
Grand corps malade (Patients)
“
Dworkin, for example, argues that our law includes not only norms found in treaties, customs, constitutions, statutes, and cases, but also moral principles that provide the best justification for the norms found there.5 On his account the things justified by moral
”
”
H.L.A. Hart (The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law Series))
“
Qu’est-ce qui définit un home? Quelle est la question que l’on pose en premier a un homme, lorsqu’on souhaite s’informer de son état ? Dans certaines sociétés, on lui demande d’abord s’il est marié, s’il a des enfants ; dans nos sociétés, on s’interroge en premier lieu sur sa profession. C’est sa place dans le processus de production, et pas son statut de reproducteur, qui définit avant tout l’homme occidental.
”
”
Michel Houellebecq (La carte et le territoire)
“
Perhaps it was true a century ago—I deeply regret that it is no longer true—but the United States criminal justice system long ago lost any legitimate claim to the loyal cooperation of American citizens. You cannot write tens of thousands of criminal statutes, including many touching upon conduct that is neither immoral nor dangerous, write those laws as broadly as you can imagine, scatter them throughout the thousands of pages of the United States Code—and then expect decent law-abiding, unsuspecting citizens to cooperate with an investigation into whether they may have violated some law they have never even heard about. The next time some police officer or government agent asks you whether you would be willing to answer a few questions about where you have been and what you have been doing, you must respectfully but very firmly decline.
”
”
James Duane (You Have the Right to Remain Innocent)
“
This is not an accident. Progressivism is a mindset that favors the use of aggressive government force to solve social problems. Prison is one of its main tools. Prison is the threat behind every progressive edict. If you don’t directly merit prison by violating a criminal statute, you can earn prison by interfering with a government agent enforcing progressive policies or by ignoring a court order to obey the law. A large number of prisoners are incarcerated either because they violated a progressive drug law or because their illegal drug habit drew them into a criminal lifestyle.
”
”
James Ostrowski (Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America)
“
In the twentieth century, with its eighteen American presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson was the greatest champion that black Americans and Mexican-Americans and indeed all Americans of color had in the White House, the greatest champion they had in all the halls of government. With the single exception of Lincoln, he was the greatest champion with a white skin that they had in the history of the Republic. He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those to whom social justice had so long been denied, the restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed to be given some dignity, the redeemer of the promises made to them by America. He was to be the President who, above all Presidents save Lincoln, codified compassion, the President who wrote mercy and justice into the statute books by which America was governed.
”
”
Robert A. Caro (Master of the Senate (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #3))
“
Ce qui définit la majorité c’est un modèle auquel il faut être conforme. Tandis qu’une minorité n’a pas de modèles, c’est un devenir, un processus. Lorsqu’une minorité crée des modèles, c’est qu’elle veut être majoritaire ou qu’elle est contrainte de se doter d’un « modèle » nécessaire à sa survie (« avoir un statut »).
”
”
Gilles Deleuze
“
He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those whom social justice had so long been denied. The restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed to be given some dignity. The redeemer of the promises made by them to America. “It is time to write it in the books of law.” By the time Lyndon Johnson left office he had done a lot of writing in those books, had become, above all presidents save Lincoln, the codifier of compassion, the president who wrote mercy and justice in the statute books by which America was governed.
”
”
Robert A. Caro (The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #4))
“
As we ascend to the hierarchies of living matter, we find, even on the lowest level observable through the electron microscope, sub-cellular structures-organelles-of staggering complexity. And the most striking fact is that these minuscule parts of the cell function as self-governing wholes in their own right, each following its own statute-book of rules. One type of organelles look as quasi-independent agencies after the cell's growth; others after its energy supply, reproduction, communications, and so on.
”
”
Arthur Koestler (The Ghost in the Machine)
“
Corporations aren’t citizens or neighbors or parents. They can’t vote or serve in combat. They don’t learn the Pledge of Allegiance. They don’t have souls. They’re revenue machines. I don’t have any problem with that. I think it’s absurd to lay moral or civic obligations on them. Their only obligations are strategic, and while they can get very complex, at root they’re not civic entities. With corporations, I have no problem with government enforcement of statutes and regulatory policy serving a conscience function.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel)
“
Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will some day become Congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.
You wouldn't believe how many people smoke pot. If anyone reading this would like to become mayor, believe me, there is a vast, untapped vote. Of course, you wouldn't want to be the Marijuana Mayor, so you'd have to make it a trick statute, like: 'The Crippled Catholic Jewish War Children in Memory of Ward Bond Who Died for Your Bill to Make Marijuana Legal.
”
”
Lenny Bruce (How to Talk Dirty and Influence People)
“
Dans un ermitage, on se contente d'être aux loges de la forêt. Les fenêtres servent à accueillir la nature en soi, non à s'en protéger. On la contemple, on y prélève ce qu'il faut, mais on ne se nourrit pas de l'ambition de la soumettre. La cabane permet une posture, mais ne donne pas un statut. On joue à l'ermite, on ne peut se prétendre pionnier.
”
”
Sylvain Tesson (Dans les forêts de Sibérie)
“
They are doodlehums."
"Doodlehums?"
"Antisocial individuals, intentional circumventors of statutes."
"Oh, hoodlums. Yes I guessed that much on my own. What can you tell me about them?"
"Morton Zeemeister," he said, indulges in many such activities. He is the heavy one with the pale fur. Normally, he remains away far from the scene of his hoodling, employing agents to execute it for him. The other, Jamie Buckler, is one such. He has hoodled well for Zeemeister over the years and was recently promoted by him to guard his body.
”
”
Roger Zelazny (Doorways in the Sand)
“
There is no law, there is only conjecture. The Progressive ethos changes the law's meaning according to fad and fashion.
”
”
A.E. Samaan
“
So why do they do it? Simple. Just ask the families of Michele Wallace, Diane Keidel, Cher Elder; Lois Kleber, Ike Hampton, Gerry Boggs, Heather Ikard, Heather Dawn Church, and Christine Elkins. No one could replace the lives lost, but neither were their loved ones left wondering what had happened to them. There is no statute of limitations on grief, and the truth does matter.
”
”
Steve Jackson (No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators)
“
How is one statute against murder or rape or theft different from any other?” I said, though my mind had careened into a hundred different questions. “They are different in that they come from a god who says we are to show honor of him by honoring others. And so as we feed our hungry neighbor and do not steal from him we honor not our neighbor, but the image of the One who fashioned him. You say our god has no face. This is not true. Yaweh’s face is before us in every person we see, as we are made in his image. Living people who require more kindness and adoration than any idol.
”
”
Tosca Lee (The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen)
“
Subvert the social and civil order! Aye, I would destroy, to the last vestige, this mockery of order, this travesty upon justice! Break up the home? Yes, every home that rests on slavery! Every marriage that represents the sale and transfer of the individuality of one of its parties to the other! Every institution, social or civil, that stands between man and his right; every tie that renders one a master, another a serf; every law, every statute, every be-it-enacted that represents tyranny; everything you call American privilege that can only exist at the expense of international right.
Now cry out, "Nihilist-disintegrationist !"
Say that I would isolate humanity, reduce society to its elemental state, make men savage! It is not true. But rather than see this devastating, cankering, enslaving system you call social order go on, rather than help to keep alive the accursed institutions of Authority, I would help to reduce every fabric in the social structure to its native element.
”
”
Voltairine de Cleyre (The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader)
“
This idea of collective liberty also was expressed in many bizarre obligations which New England towns collectively imposed upon their members. Eastham’s town meeting, for example, ordered that no single man could marry until he had killed six blackbirds or three crows. Every town book contained many such rules.4 The General Court also passed sweeping statutes which allowed the magistrates to suppress almost any act, by any means. One such law, for example, threatened that “if any man shall exceed the bounds of moderation, we shall punish him severely.” The definition of “exceeding the bounds of moderation” was left to the magistrate.
”
”
David Hackett Fischer (Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history Book 1))
“
Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or cultural wealth. This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life. To denounce Nazism for intolerance, cruelty and stimulation of hatred amounts to fostering insincerity if, in our personal relations to other persons, if, in our daily walk and conversation, we are moved by racial, color or other class prejudice; indeed, by anything save a generous belief in their possibilities as human beings, a belief which brings with it the need for providing conditions which will enable these capacities to reach fulfillment. The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.
”
”
John Dewey
“
Lorsque j’ai commencé à voyager en Gwendalavir aux côtés d'Ewìlan et de Salim, je savais que, au fil de mon écriture, ma route croiserait celle d'une multitude de personnages. Personnages attachants ou irritants, discrets ou hauts en couleurs, pertinents ou impertinents, sympathiques ou maléfiques... Je savais cela et je m'en réjouissais.
Rien, en revanche, ne m'avait préparé à une rencontre qui allait bouleverser ma vie.
Rien ne m'avait préparé à Ellana.
Elle est arrivée dans la Quête à sa manière, tout en finesse tonitruante, en délicatesse remarquable, en discrétion étincelante. Elle est arrivée à un moment clef, elle qui se moque des serrures, à un moment charnière, elle qui se rit des portes, au sein d’un groupe constitué, elle pourtant pétrie d’indépendance, son caractère forgé au feu de la solitude.
Elle est arrivée, s'est glissée dans la confiance d'Ewilan avec l'aisance d'un songe, a capté le regard d’Edwin et son respect, a séduit Salim, conquis maître Duom... Je l’ai regardée agir, admiratif ; sans me douter un instant de la toile que sa présence, son charisme, sa beauté tissaient autour de moi.
Aucun calcul de sa part. Ellana vit, elle ne calcule pas. Elle s'est contentée d'être et, ce faisant, elle a tranquillement troqué son statut de personnage secondaire pour celui de figure emblématique d'une double trilogie qui ne portait pourtant pas son nom. Convaincue du pouvoir de l'ombre, elle n'a pas cherché la lumière, a épaulé Ewilan dans sa quête d'identité puis dans sa recherche d'une parade au danger qui menaçait l'Empire.
Sans elle, Ewilan n'aurait pas retrouvé ses parents, sans elle, l'Empire aurait succombé à la soif de pouvoir des Valinguites, mais elle n’en a tiré aucune gloire, trop équilibrée pour ignorer que la victoire s'appuyait sur les épaules d'un groupe de compagnons soudés par une indéfectible amitié.
Lorsque j'ai posé le dernier mot du dernier tome de la saga d'Ewilan, je pensais que chacun de ses compagnons avait mérité le repos. Que chacun d'eux allait suivre son chemin, chercher son bonheur, vivre sa vie de personnage libéré par l'auteur après une éprouvante aventure littéraire.
Chacun ?
Pas Ellana.
Impossible de la quitter. Elle hante mes rêves, se promène dans mon quotidien, fluide et insaisissable, transforme ma vision des choses et ma perception des autres, crochète mes pensées intimes, escalade mes désirs secrets...
Un auteur peut-il tomber amoureux de l'un de ses personnages ?
Est-ce moi qui ai créé Ellana ou n'ai-je vraiment commencé à exister que le jour où elle est apparue ? Nos routes sont-elles liées à jamais ?
— Il y a deux réponses à ces questions, souffle le vent à mon oreille. Comme à toutes les questions. Celle du savant et celle du poète.
— Celle du savant ? Celle du poète ? Qu'est-ce que...
— Chut... Écris.
”
”
Pierre Bottero (Ellana (Le Pacte des MarchOmbres, #1))
“
Repressed memory of childhood sexual abuse usually begins to surface around age 30 when natural electro-chemical changes occur in the brain. The is a widely known and established fact. The fact that the Vatican placed a ten-year statute of limitations on reporting such abuse eliminates a vast number of their victims from joining the class action suit. Neither Cathy nor Kelly is eligible for compensation under this rule. How many others are being ignored?
”
”
Cathy O'Brien (ACCESS DENIED For Reasons Of National Security: Documented Journey From CIA Mind Control Slave To U.S. Government Whistleblower)
“
Dès l'enfance, je percevais l'écoulement des heures, indépendantes de tout référence, de tout acte et de tout événement, la disjonction du temps de ce qui n'était pas lui, son existence autonome, son statut particulier, son empire, sa tyrannie. Je me rappelle on ne peut plus clairement cet après-midi où, por la première fois, en face de l'univers vacant, je n'étais plus que fuite d'instants rebelles à remplir encore leur fonction propre. Le temps se décollait de l'être à mes dépens.
”
”
Emil M. Cioran
“
I am ready for change that no one and nothing other than You can deliver (Ezekiel 36:26-27 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them). So, by faith, Lord, I confess this year to be my year of gratitude, optimism, rededication, maturation, complete deliverance, healing and restoration, knowledge, wisdom, revelation and illumination, increased capacity, and divine authority.
”
”
Tina Campbell (I Need A Day to Pray)
“
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
“
Their quarry had been cornered in his defenses and their bloodlust was such that they were likely to pay top Julep to watch him escape, so that he might be brutalized and killed before their very eyes, as this was much more gratifying to them than simply watching justice be enacted. They, too, understood that societal constructs for justice were moderate gratification, at best, as they were empty and subject to contradictions and compromises steeped in moral relativism and an unconditional dependence upon overblown semantics that made the law a mockery of itself. As for the ideologies that these hollow systems of jurisprudence sought to define and uphold: these could easily be subjugated through a meticulous analysis of the trivial components of one statute or another. The rule of law had failed them. What the people wanted, in its stead, was rather simple: moral absolutes. Good versus evil. And evil was not to be simply prevailed over. Evil was to be dominated and effectively eliminated, because as long as it was able to while away the time somewhere—in some sweaty prison cell, far away, staring out the barred window with a wry smile, as it plotted its next offensive on the Common Good, a sense of wholeness could not be achieved.
”
”
Ashim Shanker (Don't Forget to Breathe (Migrations, Volume I))
“
I counted my years and found that I have less time to live from here on than I have lived up to now.
I feel like that child who won a packet of sweets: he ate the first with pleasure, but when he realized that there were few left, he began to enjoy them intensely.
I no longer have time for endless meetings where statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be achieved.
I no longer have time to support the absurd people who, despite their chronological age, haven't grown up.
My time is too short:
I want the essence,
my soul is in a hurry.
I don't have many sweets
in the package anymore.
I want to live next to human people,
very human,
who know how to laugh at their mistakes,
and who are not inflated by their triumphs,
and who take on their responsibilities.
Thus, human dignity is defended, and we move towards truth and honesty.
It is the essential that makes life worth living.
I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch hearts, people who have been taught by the hard blows of life to grow with gentle touches of the soul.
Yes, I'm in a hurry, I'm in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.
I don't intend to waste any of the leftover sweets.
I am sure they will be delicious, much more than what I have eaten so far.
My goal is to reach the end satisfied
and at peace with my loved ones
and my conscience.
We have two lives.
And the second begins when you realize you only have one.
Credits: Mário Raul de Morais Andrade
(Oct 9, 1893 – Feb 25, 1945)
Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, photographer
”
”
Mario Raul de Morais Andrade
“
One reason might be that if I hadn't tripped, I'd have been hamburger.
When this sort of thing occurs, people often say that there was some power greater than themselves at work. This sounds reasonable. I am just suggesting that it is not necessary to equate "greater than ourselves" with "stretched across the heavenly vault." It could mean "just slightly greater." A cocoon of energy that we carry with us, that is capable, under some conditions, of affecting physicality.
Furthermore, I conjecture that the totality of all these souls is what constitutes the Godhead. I mean this in the same sense as the "Leviathan" of Thomas Hobbes, whereby man, that is everyone together, creates "that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State, which is but an artificial man, though of greater statute and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defense it was created."
And that leads me to my Insight: God was not there at the beginning of evolution; God is what lies at the end of it.
”
”
Paul Quarrington (The Boy on the Back of the Turtle: Seeking God, Quince Marmalade, and the Fabled Albatross on Darwin's Islands)
“
In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
”
”
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
They say, still, that no Wizarding duel ever matched that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary wizards do battle. Dumbledore’s triumph, and its consequences for the Wizarding world, are considered a turning point in magical history to match the introduction of the International Statute of Secrecy or the downfall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain; he could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship more than I can say, but my loss is as nothing compared to the Wizarding world’s. That he was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Hogwarts headmasters cannot be in question. He died as he lived: working always for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day that I met him.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favourable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
The physician had asked the patient to read aloud a paragraph from the statutes of Trinity College, Dublin. ‘It shall be in the power of the College to examine or not examine every Licentiate, previous to his admission to a fellowship, as they shall think fit.’ What the patient actually read was: ‘An the bee-what in the tee-mother of the trothodoodoo, to majoram or that emidrate, eni eni krastei, mestreit to ketra totombreidei, to ra from treido a that kekritest.’ Marvellous! Philip said to himself as he copied down the last word. What style! What majestic beauty! The richness and sonority of the opening phrase! ‘An the bee-what in the tee-mother of the trothodoodoo.’ He repeated it to himself. ‘I shall print it on the title page of my next novel,’ he wrote in his notebook.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Point Counter Point)
“
Sometimes the transcript is not so hidden. Point Four of the 1948 platform of Strom Thurmond’s States’ Rights Democratic Party—the Dixiecrats—weaves together the public and private in a seamless and visible whole: “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one’s living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.” The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945–2000: A Brief History with Documents, ed. Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie (Boston:
”
”
Corey Robin (The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin)
“
Yes," said Pericles. "Today's patriotism may be tomorrow's treason, if it serves any judge or politician. And so it would go with any statute you might define today, no matter how explicit the terms. Let us suppose that a future Roman Head of Stae is a plotting and ambitious his country. So he might say to his pople, 'I love my country and in the name of that love I propose such and such an amendment to the Constitution, of which our fathers would have approved in the light of today's needs and changing circumstances. In truth, the Constitution of our fathers really means so-and-so.' I assure you, gentlemen, that he will already have a band of fellow traitors who will uphold him, and help to confuse the citizens. Then, if any patriot would oppose him the traitor will denounce him for treason! You can be certain, then,, that the unfortunate patriot would suffer the penalty for the alleged crime.
”
”
Taylor Caldwell
“
Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift; their property could not be seized even for debt, — while the plebeian, overwhelmed by taxes and statute-labor, was continually tormented, now by the king’s tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit property; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the conditions of ownership to be alike for all; they thought that every one should enjoy and freely dispose of his possessions his income and the fruit of his labor and industry. The people did not invent property; but as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exercised by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of property — statute-labor, mortmain, maîtrise, and exclusion from public office — have disappeared; the conditions of its enjoyment have been modified: the principle still remains the same. There has been progress in the regulation of the right; there has been no revolution.
”
”
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (What Is Property?)
“
David's Song of Thanks 8 f Oh give thanks to the LORD; g call upon his name; h make known his deeds among the peoples! 9 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! 10 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice! 11 i Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually! 12 j Remember the wondrous works that he has done, k his miracles and the judgments he uttered, 13 O offspring of Israel his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen ones! 14 He is the LORD our God; l his judgments are in all the earth. 15 Remember his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations, 16 the covenant m that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac, 17 which n he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, 18 saying, o “To you I will give the land of Canaan, as your portion for an inheritance.” 19 When you were p few in number, of little account, and q sojourners in it, 20 wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, 21 he allowed no one to oppress them; he r rebuked kings on their account, 22 saying, “Touch not my anointed ones, do my s prophets no harm!” 23 t Sing to the LORD, all the earth! Tell of his salvation from day to day. 24 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! 25 For u great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and he is to be feared v above all gods. 26 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, w but the LORD made the heavens. 27 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and joy are in his place. 28 Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, x ascribe to the LORD glory and strength! 29 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him! y Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; [2] 30 tremble before him, all the earth; yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. 31 z Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice, and let them say among the nations, a “The LORD reigns!” 32 b Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! 33 Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. 34 Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! 35 c Say also: “Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather and deliver us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise. 36 d Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting!” e Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised the LORD.
”
”
Anonymous (Holy Bible: English Standard Version (ESV))
“
True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied.
With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . .
We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race.
Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our opposition to such offenses is rooted in religion, then are restraints upon murder and rape unconstitutional?
We arrive at such absurdities if we attempt to erect a wall of separation between the operation of the laws and those Christian moral convictions that move most Americans. If we are to try to sustain some connection between Christian teaching and the laws of this land of ours, we must understand the character of that link. We must claim neither too much nor too little for the influence of Christian belief upon our structure of law. . . .
I am suggesting that Christian faith and reason have been underestimated in an age bestridden, successively, by the vulgarized notions of the rationalists, the Darwinians, and the Freudians. Yet I am not contending that the laws ever have been the Christian word made flesh nor that they can ever be. . . .
What Christianity (or any other religion) confers is not a code of positive laws, but instead some general understanding of justice, the human condition being what it is. . . .
In short, judges cannot well be metaphysicians--not in the execution of their duties upon the bench, at any rate, even though the majority upon the Supreme Court of this land, and judges in inferior courts, seem often to have mistaken themselves for original moral philosophers during the past quarter century. The law that judges mete out is the product of statute, convention, and precedent. Yet behind statute, convention, and precedent may be discerned, if mistily, the forms of Christian doctrines, by which statute and convention and precedent are much influenced--or once were so influenced. And the more judges ignore Christian assumptions about human nature and justice, the more they are thrown back upon their private resources as abstract metaphysicians--and the more the laws of the land fall into confusion and inconsistency.
Prophets and theologians and ministers and priests are not legislators, ordinarily; yet their pronouncements may be incorporated, if sometimes almost unrecognizably, in statute and convention and precedent. The Christian doctrine of natural law cannot be made to do duty for "the law of the land"; were this tried, positive justice would be delayed to the end of time. Nevertheless, if the Christian doctrine of natural law is cast aside utterly by magistrates, flouted and mocked, then positive law becomes patternless and arbitrary.
”
”
Russell Kirk (Rights and Duties: Reflections on Our Conservative Constitution)