Quotations about:
law enforcement
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
We have laws, jails, courts, armies, guns and armories enough to make saints of us all, if they were the true preventives of crime; but we know they do not prevent crime; that wickedness and depravity exist in spite of them, nay, increase as the struggle between classes grows fiercer, wealth greater and more powerful and poverty more gaunt and desperate.
Lucy Parsons (1851-1942) American labor organizer, anarchist, orator [a.k.a. Lucy Gonzalez]
“The Principles of Anarchism,” lecture (1905)
(Source)
The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, gaolers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Essay (1849-05), “Resistance to Civil Government [On the Duty of Civil Disobedience],” Æsthetic Papers, No. 1, Article 10
(Source)
Based on an 1848 lecture at the Concord Lyceum.
It must be made a sacred maxim, that the militia obey the executive power, which represents the whole people in the execution of laws. To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at the individual discretion, except in private self-defence, or by partial orders of towns, counties, or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Vol. 3, ch. 3 “Marchamond Nedham: Errors of Government and Rules of Policy” (1787)
(Source)
It’s a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.
In dealing with the law and with people I have found a vast difference between “should” and “is.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Friday [Brian] (1982)
What you cannot enforce,
Do not command!Sophocles (496-406 BC) Greek tragic playwright
Oedipus at Colonus, l. 839 [tr. Fitzgerald (1941)]
In the words of the old saying, every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
The Pursuit of Justice, “Eradicating Free Enterprise in Organized Crime” (1964)
(Source)
All Crimes are safe, but hated Poverty.
This, only this, the rigid Law pursues.Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Poem (1738), “London: A Poem,” ll. 159-160
(Source)
I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) American military leader, US President (1869-77)
Inaugural Address
What man […] believes the law can hurt him; that is, words and paper, without hands and swords of men?
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher
Leviathan, Part 4, ch. 46 (1651)
(Source)
Countering the argument in Aristotle's Politics, which asserts that laws should govern, not men.
Often attributed to John Harrington, who quoted Hobbes in his The Commonwealth of Oceana, Part 1 (1656).
LEAR: Through tattered clothes small vices do appear.
Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.
Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
King Lear, Act 4, sc. 6, l. 180ff (4.6.180-183) (1606)
(Source)
