Law Quotes

“I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.” Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, 4/16/63

"Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.": Thomas Jefferson to I. Tiffany, 1819

Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.
[The ages of American law, Grant Gilmore, (Yale university Press,1977)P.110, quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, The common Law, (Howe ed. 1963)]

'Sometimes To Do the Right Thing, You Have to Break a Law' -Edward Snowden