« All Law Quotes · H. L. Mencken's Page
Law Quotes by H. L. Mencken
- The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and…
- Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.
- One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim…
- Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives…
- It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with…
- There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or…
- The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.
- Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are…
- It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of…
- Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
- At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of…
- The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of…
- Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None…
- No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old,…
- Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government,…
- A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
- Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws…
- Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this…
- It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either…
- Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.
More Law Quotes
- The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to… — Hannah Arendt
- Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life. — Aristophanes
- At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. — Aristotle
- The law is reason, free from passion. — Aristotle
- I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. — Aristotle
- Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. — Aristotle
- When we were making the law, when we were writing the literature and the mathematics the grandfarthers of Blair and little Bush… — Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
- There's no rule, no law, no regulation that says you can't come back. So I have every right to come back. — Lance Armstrong
- This is the sheriff you're talking about, with a gun and badge that enforces the law. Nothing is going to stop me… — Joe Arpaio
- Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior. — Julian Assange
- In my role as Wikileaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources… — Julian Assange
- Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing. — Kate Atkinson