Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

"All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores."

~ William F. Buckley, Jr.  

"Oh, judge, your damn laws: the good people don't need them
and the bad people don't follow them so what good are they?"

~ Ammon Hennacy  

"Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
From none but self expect applause:
He noblest lives and noblest dies
Who makes and keeps his self-made laws."

~ Sir Richard Francis Burton  

"There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are 'just' because the law makes them so."

~ Frederic Bastiat  

"I say that you cannot administer
a wicked law impartially.
You can only destroy.
You can only punish.
I warn you that a wicked law,
like cholera, destroys everyone
it touches -- its upholders
as well as its defiers."

~ Jerome Lawrence  

"To declare that in the administration of criminal law
the end justifies the means -- to declare that
the Government may commit crimes in order to secure
conviction of a private criminal -- would bring
terrible retribution."

~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis  

"After 20 years on the bench
I have concluded that federal drug laws are
a disaster. It is time to get the government
out of drug enforcement."

~ Judge Whitman Knapp  

"It's gotten to where defense attorneys in federal drug cases
can do their clients about as much good as Dr. Kevorkian can
do his -- quietly shepherd them through to the least painful end."

~ Dan Baum  

"We simply do not catch
a high enough percentage of
users to make the law a real threat,
although we do catch enough
to seriously overburden
our legal system."

~ John Kaplan  

"Drug offenses ... may be regarded as the prototypes of non-victim
crimes today. The private nature of the sale and use of these drugs has
led the police to resort to methods of detection and surveillance that
intrude upon our privacy, including illegal search, eavesdropping, and
entrapment.

Indeed, the successful prosecution of such cases often requires police
infringement of the constitutional protections that safeguard the
privacy of individuals."

~ John Kaplan  

"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies
that could someday facilitate a police state."

~ Bruce Schneier  

"I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police."

~ Justice Robert H. Jackson  

"Let us revise our views and work from the premise that all laws should be for the welfare of society as a whole and not directed at the punishment of sins."

~ John Biggs Jr.  

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
over any member of a civilized community, against his will,
is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral,
is not sufficient warrant."

~ John Stuart Mill  

"We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them."

~ Benjamin R. Tucker