Top 100 The Rule Of Law Quotes
#1. For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#2. The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions -- knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas -- become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use."
~Louis D. Brandeis
Louis D. Brandeis
#3. Protests are fine. But in South Carolina we believe in the rule of law, and the people of this state should never doubt that as governor, I will enforce it.
Nikki Haley
#4. That's the key: get the constitution in place. Get rule of law in place, capital will come, electricity will follow.
Steve King
#5. When scores of indicted criminals sit in parliament who could believe in the rule of law ...
Donna Leon
#6. Good, law-abiding, value-oriented citizens are the ultimate in hypocrisy; "majority rules" and the law are exactly the same as being the biggest bully on the block with the biggest stick-it is only might that allows one group to force another to live by its code of conduct ...
William J. Murray
#7. The political restructuring we pursue in China is aimed at advancing the self-improvement and development of the socialist political system. We will continue to expand people's democracy and build a socialist country under the rule of law in keeping with China's national conditions.
Hu Jintao
#8. The rule of law is critical for economic development; without clear property rights and contract enforcement, it is difficult for businesses to break out of small circles of trust.
Francis Fukuyama
#9. Integrationists are delighted to live in a democratic country where the rule of law prevails, whereas chauvinists wish to import the customs of the Middle East and South Asia.
Daniel Pipes
#10. Then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak.
Code Of Hammurabi 1772 B.C.
#11. Keeping this facility [Guantanamo prison] open is contrary to our values. It undermines our standing in the world. It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of upholding the highest standards of rule of law.
Audie Cornish
#12. What should be targeted is a concept of organic, and not just mechanic, democracy that preserves the rule of law, separation of powers, and that is participatory and pluralistic.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
#13. In the name of the rule of law, democracy and human rights, we cannot accept that the rights of individuals (Arab or Muslim) be trampled upon, or that populations are targeted and discriminated against in the name of the war against terrorism.
Tariq Ramadan
#14. Military dictatorship is born from the power of the gun, and so it undermines the concept of the rule of law and gives birth to a culture of might, a culture of weapons, violence and intolerance.
Benazir Bhutto
#15. The citizens of America and the citizens of Texas expect to be able to live in safety in their communities. That's what the rule of law is truly all about.
Rick Perry
#16. Let the amelioration in our laws of property proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the grasping of the poor. Let us understand that the equitable rule is, that no one should take more than his share, let him be ever so rich.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#17. The legal system we have and the rule of law are far more responsible for our traditional liberties than any system of one man one vote. Any country or Government which wants to proceed towards tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and undermine the law.
Margaret Thatcher
#18. Under the common law, one of the more controversial rules is the 'no duty to rescue rule' that says that, if you were not responsible for placing someone in danger or risk, you have no obligation to help them, even when it would cost little to save their life.
Jonathan Turley
#19. Our goals are the same as those of the U.N.'s founders, who sought to replace a world at war with one where the rule of law would prevail, where human rights were honored, where development would blossom, where conflict would give way to freedom from violence.
Ronald Reagan
#20. Becoming a modern society is about industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of literacy, education, and wealth. The qualities that make a society Western, in contrast, are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society.
Samuel P. Huntington
#21. Love, then, is 'the fulfilling of the Law'. Love is the rule that contains all the other rules. Love is the commandment that justifies all the other commandments.
Paulo Coelho
#22. Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.
Stockwell Day
#23. In my work a good library is essential. It enables me to learn the background and previous discussions of the various issues I am called upon to decide. It provides the stability and continuity for the rule of law.
Sandra Day O'Connor
#24. Pacifists should stress more and more that it is the rule of law for which they are fighting.
Fredrik Bajer
#26. The spine of the FBI is the rule of law. The spine of the FBI is a commitment to doing the right thing, in the right way, while protecting civil liberties.
James Comey
#27. Seats on the [Court] bench are not reserved for causes or interests. They're given to those who will uphold the rule of law so long as the nominee is well-qualified to interpret and apply the law.
Sam Brownback
#28. Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out the laws of taste.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
#29. A country's adhering to the rule of law does not mean that its citizens will not do bad things.
James Inhofe
#30. So we were shouted at, we were beat on. "What gives you the right to do this! Who do you think you are!" We replied to this in the thousand-voice chorus, at a volume of 115 decibels: "WE ARE THE RULE OF LAW.
Kim Stanley Robinson
#31. Unfortunately, the world does not always act in a manner consistent with one's plans for it.
Peter David
#32. Timothy Batten is an individual of high integrity and has given many years of service to Georgia and to the United States, .. His common sense dedication to the rule of law, intellect and experience make him a solid candidate for the federal bench in North Georgia.
Saxby Chambliss
#33. In some ways, the challenges are even more daunting than they were at the peak of the cold war. Not only do we continue to face grave nuclear threats, but those threats are being compounded by new weapons developments, new violence within States and new challenges to the rule of law.
Kofi Annan
#34. Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.
Salman Rushdie
#35. The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power, and preventing the arbitrary administration of punishment is a basic ideal of any society that purports to be governed by the rule of law.
William J. Brennan
#36. We should insist that governments receiving American aid live up to standards of accountability and transparency, and we should support countries that embrace market reforms, democracy, and the rule of law.
Lee H. Hamilton
#37. It is ... highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Ian Tattersall
#38. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.
John Paul Stevens
#39. In a republic the first rule for the guidance of the citizen is obedience of the law.
Calvin Coolidge
#40. I mean that the time where we need International agreement more than ever on the environment and the rest, poverty we are breaking up our International Institutions and the rule of law and Tony Blair is part of it.
Clare Short
#41. all democratic societies based on the rule of law, on the Tinkerbell Principle: it functioned only so long as its participants believed in it.48
William J. Bernstein
#42. Not a season passes without new disclosures showing Nixon's numerous attempts at criminal use of his presidential powers and in fact the scorn he held for the rule of law.
Bob Woodward
#43. Turkey shares Europe's fundamental values of democracy and the rule of law.
Ali Babacan
#44. Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.
Margaret Thatcher
#45. We'd be safer with musket in a safe town than with an assault rifle in a "without rule of law" world. That may not be sexy, but it's the truth.
Michael Mabee
#46. We must bring the rule of law to its full fruition in the United States, and when we do, we will have achieved the goals and rhetoric of our Founding Fathers.
David Boies
#47. At its best, management theory is part of the democratic promise of America. It aims to replace the despotism of the old bosses with the rule of scientific law. It offers economic power to all who have the talent and energy to attain it.
Matthew Stewart
#48. When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#49. I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it.
Paul Krugman
#50. As ages roll on there is doubtless a progression in human nature. The intellectual comes to rule the physical, and the moral claims to subordinate both. It is no longer strength of body that prevails, but strength of mind; while the law of God proclaims itself superior to both.
James McCosh
#51. Since achieving their independence in 1992, the people of Croatia have built a democratic society based on the rule of law, respect for human rights, and a free market economy.
Elton Gallegly
#52. The just response to this terrible event should be to go immediately to the world community, the United Nations. The rule of international law should be marshaled, but it's probably too late because the United States has never done that; it's always gone it alone.
Edward Said
#53. September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur.
Ron Paul
#54. If we destroy human rights and rule of law in the response to terrorism, they have won.
Joichi Ito
#55. The world is threatened by terrorism and violent extremism like never before. The rule of law is one of our chief defences against terrorism. Our shared values of freedom and democracy are shielded when like-minded nations work together to promote justice.
Peter MacKay
#56. In recent years, the choice of drugs on these reservations and throughout my district has been methamphetamines. It has destroyed the rule of law among the reservation people. It is killing our tribal youth in this country.
Rick Renzi
#57. Cicero had lived through terrible times and his fundamental aim was to make sure that they never returned. He stood for the rule of law and the maintenance of a constitution in which all social groups could play a part, but where the Senate took the lead according to ancestral tradition.
Anthony Everitt
#58. Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.
Samantha Power
#59. Judge [Samuel] Alito has a reputation for being an exceptional and honest judge devoted to the rule of law, as well as being a man of integrity.
Chuck Grassley
#60. We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.
Matt Blunt
#61. The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries - these live in a global space which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint.
Paddy Ashdown
#62. I am a socialist, a believer in rational thought and the rule of law.
Ken Livingstone
#63. True freedom requires the rule of law and justice, and a judicial system in which the rights of some are not secured by the denial of rights to others.
Jonathan Sacks
#64. Without peace and the rule of law, civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights cannot be enjoyed, when killing, maiming and mutual poisoning prevail.
Alfred-Maurice De Zayas
#65. An elite class that is free to operate without limits - whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior - is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power.
Glenn Greenwald
#66. The law of God is not made the rule of life. The children, as they make homes of their own, feel under no obligation to teach their children what they themselves have never been taught.
Ellen G. White
#67. The reason I like the criminal justice system is there aren't Republican or Democrat victims or police officers or prosecutors. It's about respect for the rule of law!
Trey Gowdy
#68. President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet constitution, and he noted that it purported to grant wonderful rights of all sorts to people. But those rights were empty promises, because that system did not have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law and enforce those rights.
John Roberts
#69. Arizona has become a national leader in the restoration of the Rule of Law, with over 100,000 illegal aliens having left the state since 2007.
Russell Pearce
#70. Uganda's Constitutional Court will decide whether the military court can proceed with this trial. A nation cannot claim to be operating under the rule of law if its military tribunals ignore the orders of civilian courts.
Bill Vaughan
#71. There is a real and evident problem of democracy in Georgia, and this was the core reason of my entrance into politics. We have no rule of law. It's absolutely absent.
Bidzina Ivanishvili
#72. Capital trickles away from dictatorial states that fail to defend private individuals and their property. Instead, it flows into states upholding the rule of law and private property.
Yuval Noah Harari
#73. Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.
Philip G. Zimbardo
#74. Few things are more commonly misunderstood than the nature and meaning of theocracy. It is commonly assumed to be a dictatorial rule by self-appointed men who claim to rule for God. In reality, theocracy in Biblical law is the closest thing to a radical libertarianism that can be had.
R.J. Rushdoony
#75. The U.S.-led western alliance, while acting as an advocate of democracy, rule of law and human rights, is acting from the opposite position, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign right of states enshrined in the U.N. Charter and trying to decide for others what is good and what is bad.
Sergei Lavrov
#76. Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.
Abbie Hoffman
#77. The rule of law should be respected so that the basic structure of our democracy is maintained and further strengthened.
Lal Bahadur Shastri
#78. Three ideas stand out above all others in the influence they have exerted and are destined to exert upon the development of the human race: The idea of the Golden Rule; the idea of natural law; the idea of age-long growth or evolution.
Robert Andrews Millikan
#79. immanent in their willingness to break the law was not so much a desire to sow chaos as a compulsion to instate a more just legal order. To the extent that our current rule of law is more capacious and emancipatory than its predecessors were, we owe much of that gain to lawbreakers.
James C. Scott
#80. Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#81. Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy.
James Bovard
#82. Judges rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times.
Warren E. Burger
#83. The Constitution is the fundamental rule for people to live in society. If the rule no longer suits the lives of the general public due to changing times, it should be changed. That goes for regular laws as well as the Constitution.
Ichiro Ozawa
#84. Canada does not just 'go along' in order to 'get along.' We will 'go along,' only if we 'go' in a direction that advances Canada's values: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
John Baird
#85. For the highest exercise of judicial duty is to subordinate one's personal pulls and one's private views to the law of which we are all guaradians - those impersonal convictions that made a society a civilized community, and not the victims of personal rule.
Felix Frankfurter
#86. We all would like to see a brighter future for Haiti, and I hope this conference will serve to explore many views. Respect for human rights, freedom, and the rule of law must be established in the poorest nation in our hemisphere.
Eliot Engel
#87. There is so much each one of us can do to make a difference. We are at a dangerous juncture in the history of mankind ... We need to defend our principles and values, human rights, civil liberties and the rule of international law. If we don't our world will further descend into a state of chaos.
Bianca Jagger
#88. For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.
Joe Biden
#89. Unfortunately, the true force which propels our endless political disputes, our constant struggles for political advantage, is often not our burning concern for democracy, it is often of our dedication to the principle of the rule of law.
Olusegun Obasanjo
#90. In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that any one else could possibly reject the law of the final supremacy of brute force.
Mahatma Gandhi
#91. Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.
P. J. O'Rourke
#92. I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation. King rules or barons rule: The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice. They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it.
Samuel Smiles
#93. China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights. We will continue our efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law.
Hu Jintao
#94. The process of specialization tends, almost inevitably, to narrow the sources from which the rules of any science are drawn; and English law is no exception from this rule.
Edward Jenks
#95. Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and-most unforgivably-increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault.
Norman Finkelstein
#96. When we speak of peace, we should not mean just the absence of war. True peace rests on the pillars of individual freedom, human rights, national self-determination, and respect for the rule of law.
Ronald Reagan
#97. The factor that makes people extremely vulnerable to enslavement is the lack of the rule of law.
Kevin Bales
#98. In a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is undermined, what the general masses feel tend to become the common rule.
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#99. The law as it is considered as a rule can be no more abolished or changed than the nature of good and evil can be abolished or changed.
Samuel Bolton
#100. The traditional Confucian structure that invoked ideals of perfect human virtue for harmony must incorporate the rule of law for the modern era.
Patrick Mendis
