Law and morality quotes:

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When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. -- Frederic Bastiat
I do not think athletes should get a free pass. I don't think we should train our children and future athletes to believe that they are above the law and morality. -- Armstrong Williams
The war waged against terror since September 11 puts a strain on democracy itself, because it is mostly waged in secret, using means that are at the edge of both law and morality. Yet democracies have shown themselves capable of keeping the secret exercise of power under control. -- Michael Ignatieff
It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient. -- Julian Baggini
Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere. -- Huston Smith
I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics. -- David E. Kelley
It's never acceptable to target civilians. It violates the Geneva Accords, it violates the international law of war and it violates all principles of morality. -- Alan Dershowitz
Our enemy of international terrorism respects no laws of warfare or morality, and its individual members take innocent lives, just to create chaos for news cameras. -- Mark Kennedy
Rosa Parks was a woman of strength, conviction, and morality. Her action on December 1, 1955, to defy the law made her a leading figure in our nation's civil rights history. -- John Shimkus
Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob. -- Ayn Rand
All thoughtful persons perceive that the ideas of the morality of sexual relations upheld by the religions and laws of the Western nations are in our time undergoing a radical transformation. -- Ellen Key
The law is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the due process clause, the courts will be very busy indeed. -- Byron White
In 1984, I gave a speech at Notre Dame titled 'Religious Belief and Public Morality.' I said that Catholic legislators will live by the laws of the church because we want to stay in the club. -- Mario Cuomo
While some of them acknowledge the obligation of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine, but the law of Scotland. -- George Combe
Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking. -- Derek Jarman
There are surely times when a conservative and a liberal would agree. We would agree on how moral it is to discriminate on the basis of race. There's absolutely no light between those two positions. It becomes a little more complex when you talk about law as opposed to morality. -- Dennis Prager
When, in any ethical department, unity is attained between outer demands and inner desires, between nature and conscience, between the needs of society and the individual, the moral formula is void because inner necessity then makes it psychically and physically impossible to break the outer law. Thus, true morality is attained. -- Ellen Key
I'm not a good father and they're not children any more; the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and, because of what the law was, they went with their mothers and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life and they were not my people any more. -- Wilbur Smith
Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality. -- Baron de Montesquieu
Morality is always higher than law and we cannot forget this ever. -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality. -- Peter Singer
The morality of customs,the spirit of the laws, produces the man emancipated from the law. -- Gilles Deleuze
The study and practice of law ... does not dissolve the obligations of morality or of religion. -- John Adams
In any society that is governed by the rule of law, some form of morality is always imposed. It's inescapable. -- Kirk Cameron
Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but law, morality and leadership demand it. Without consistency, there is privilege. -- Paul Craig Roberts
Any politician who tells you morality has nothing to do with the law and government is about to do something extremely immoral. -- Joseph Farah
Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral. -- Thomas Sowell
The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist. -- Isaiah Berlin
It is not love, or morality, or international law that determines the outcome of world affairs, but the changing distribution of organized force -- William Woodruff
We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld. -- Goparaju Ramachandra Rao
Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality. -- Thomas Sowell
There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law. -- Baron de Montesquieu
[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom. -- Alexis de Tocqueville
Morality and legality have nothing to do with one another. I'm more than fine with breaking a law if it disagrees with my values and morals. -- Ashly Lorenzana
In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge. -- Robert Bork
Modern man has not only thrown away Christian theology, he has thrown away the possibility of what our forefathers had as a basis for morality and law. -- Francis Schaeffer
Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout? -- Frank Herbert

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