Quotes About The Letter Of The Law

#1. Small men command the letter of the law. Great men serve its spirit. For the spirit of the law is justice ... and justice is the spirit of God.

J.C. Marino

#2. In all religions, as in all legal systems. people find ways to skirt the rules. We obey the letter of the law without honoring its spirit, and then reassure ourselves of our righteousness.

Sy Montgomery

#3. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high range of human possibilities.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#4. It may be that these loan arrangements conform to the letter of the law, but they do not conform to the spirit of the law and to the principle of transparency on which it is based.

Bill Vaughan

#5. A person motivated by love rather than fear will not only obey the letter of the law, but will eagerly seek out new ways to carry out business with transparency and integrity.

Timothy Keller

#6. Anger is one of those emotions that doesn't follow the letter of the law. It speaks before it thinks. It rears up on its hind legs and charges.

Lynn Coady

#7. I flattered myself by thinking that, if faced with such a circumstance, I would respond within the letter of the law; but passion is a strange thing, a thing that warps and twists everything with which it comes in contact.

Craig Johnson

#8. But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.

Howard Zinn

#9. Frequently you have a clash between the more sterile letter of the law and the justice that underlies it, and I think one of the things I've been trying more or less, where it was possible, is to go with the justice rather than the letter of the law.

Harold H. Greene

#10. A program can only do what it's programmed to do, to the letter of the law. Unfortunately, what's written doesn't always coincide with what the programmer intended the program to do.

Anonymous

#11. A good practice carried to an extreme and worked in accordance with the letter of the law becomes a positive evil.

Swami Vivekananda

#12. In general, we as police officers - at least the good police officers - like to look at each situation case by case and always pay close attention to the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.

Steven Seagal

#13. People who follow their religion to the letter of the law are just silly. I mean, I want to tell Hasidic Jews I promise you, God will not mind if you wear a nice cotton blend in the summer.

Sarah Silverman

#14. I don't make political statements; let's all have a laugh. Let's all live and be free. I try and live to the letter of the law, but right on the edge of it.

Mark Roberts

#15. The letter of the law should bend; and this bending should be with the winds of freedom rather than toward the lifelessness of still punishment.

Joshua Emmet

#16. Ah me! what torture to have to deal with virtue, cold and merciless as the letter of the law!

Henryk Sienkiewicz

#17. There is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

R.J. Torbert

#18. Why does my action strike them as so horrible? Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law ... and that's enough.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#19. Only a fool permits the letter of the law to override the spirit in the heart. Do not let a piece of paper stand in the way of true love and headlines.

Rod Stewart

#20. Morris read through the letter. Was it a shade too fulsome? No, that was another law of academic life: it is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers.

David Lodge

#21. The spirit of the law is the least of the things we're prepared to violate.

Howard Tayler

#22. Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself.

Rutherford B. Hayes

#23. The laws of democracy remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals

Plato

#24. One might plausibly contend that Congress violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers when it exonerates itself from the impositions of the laws it obligates people outside the legislature to obey.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#25. There is no letter of the law to follow in Zen. There is a lot of etiquette, but there are no rules.

Frederick Lenz

#26. The decision violates both the letter and spirit of the law.

Philip E. Berger

#27. As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.

William Law

#28. As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.
[Letter to Voltaire, 25 Nov. 1777]

Frederick The Great

#29. It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law.

Pope Gregory VII

#30. It would be easy to assume that the open letter is a symptom of the Internet age. Such is not the case. In 1774, Benjamin Franklin wrote an open letter to the prime minister of Great Britain, Lord North - a satirical call for the imposition of martial law in the colonies.

Roxane Gay

#31. The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#32. The overall similarity is probably in the mentality of law enforcement officers. There's a sense of wanting to really uphold a sense of morality and make sure that the laws are enforced to the letter, whenever possible.

Benjamin McKenzie

#33. Chieftains must understand that the spirit of the law is greater than its letter.

Attila The Hun

#34. Faith cannot be about absolute certainty in the letters of the Bible and wrath against those who don't comply (Ephesians 2:15). It has to be about overwhelming trust in God's love,6 which as the apostle Paul confirms, is beyond the letter of law and narrow legalistic interpretations.

Amos Smith