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9f4fab9
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But what was there to say
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grief
sadness
happiness
love
inspirational
emptiness
forbidden
quietness
laws
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Arundhati Roy |
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cbc4408
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But what was there to say? Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief. Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.
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grief
sadness
happiness
love
inspirational
forbidden
quietness
laws
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Arundhati Roy |
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9104ec6
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Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.
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laws
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Leo Tolstoy |
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bfcdbbd
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Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.
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personal-autonomy
responsibilities
laws
rules
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G.K. Chesterton |
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7f32c90
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When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.
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words
magic
spells
laws
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Hilary Mantel |
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03facab
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To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.
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laws
crime
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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845e941
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It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? -- ... There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and electricity; as exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and those of , so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains those despicable dreams of de Pauw -- neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [ ]
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mankind
influence
discovery
politics
reason
science
happiness
philosophy
artifice
constitution
divine-right
expectation
holy-water
jefferson
paine
secular
secular-government
thomas-jefferson
thomas-paine
laws
invention
rights
government
divinity
superstition
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John Adams |
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e77281e
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It seems to me that if you wish to apply laws to us, it were only reasonable to consult us on them, and from what you have read to me about Parliament, I do not think any dragons are invited to go there
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parliament
laws
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Naomi Novik |
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ad4d40f
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The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.
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laws
fascism
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John Lescroart |
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e501cc3
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You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.
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good-and-evil
christianity
jesus
jesus-christ
laws
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Leo Tolstoy |
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dda3ca3
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Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It's unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months.
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laws
sociology
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Tom Robbins |
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2a4f972
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That's the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law.
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good-and-evil
violence
laws
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Anthony Burgess |
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4dce79a
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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
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laws
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Henry David Thoreau |
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8ccd8dc
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The only law is one which leads to freedom
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inspirational
laws
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Richard Bach |
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6da38c4
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There are some laws that are coded into the very nature of the universe, and one is: There Is Never Enough Shelf Space.
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humour
nature
space
laws
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Terry Pratchett |
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dc452a1
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Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken. Infallibility is a sin in any man. All laws can be broken and are. Often.
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man
laws
right-and-wrong
rules
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Craig Ferguson |
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25c8f8c
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Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensees, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie. (There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)
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thoughts
goodness
privacy
laws
guilt
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Michel de Montaigne |
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5b7511a
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Society had more and more rules, and laws that contradicted the rules, and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take even a step outside the invisible regulations that guided everyone's lives.
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society
laws
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Paulo Coelho |
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bcec2b3
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What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.
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rebellion
freedom
autonomy
liberty
laws
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G.K. Chesterton |
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14dc73b
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It was like the imminent arrival of Gargantuan preparations had to be made to widen the gutters of Denver and foreshorten certain laws to fit his suffering bulk and bursting ecstasies.
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ecstasies
foreshorten
gargantuan
gutters
laws
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Jack Kerouac |
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219ecbc
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They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business.
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chinese-society
justinian
mind-your-own-business
pandects
funny
moby-dick
melville
laws
lol
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Herman Melville |
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cd84944
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La justicia pertenece al campo de las fuerzas del alma. Y por eso puede brotar en los lugares menos propicios, pues cuando la llamamos, alli acude, a veces con la venda en los ojos pero alenta al oido, desde no se sabe muy bien donde, como una cosa anterior a jueces y acusados, incluso a las propias leyes escritas
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humanity
el-lápiz-dek-carpintero
terms
historical
laws
justice
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Manuel Rivas |
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ae09fbd
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"Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!" Larch blurted hastily. ..."In a better world..." she began patiently. "No, not in a better world!" he cried. "In this one--in this world. I take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!" ... "Oh, I can't always be right," Larch said tiredly. "Yes, I know," Nurse Caroline said sympathetically. "It's because even a good man can't always be right that we need a society, that we need certain rules--call them priorities, if you prefer," she said. ... Always in the background of his mind, there was a newborn baby crying... And they were not crying to be born, he knew; they were crying because they were born."
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institutions
laws
rules
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John Irving |
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ee994cd
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In a state which is really articulated rationally all the laws and organizations are nothing but a realization of freedom in its essential characteristics. When this is the case, the individual's reason finds in these institutions, only the actuality of his own essence, and if he obeys these laws, he coincides, not with something alien to himself, but simply with what is his own. Freedom of choice, of course, is often equally called 'freedom'; but freedom of choice is only non-rational freedom, choice and self-determination issuing not from the rationality of the will but from fortuitous impulses and their dependence on sense and the external world.
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individuality
the-state
institutions
hegel
rationality
laws
modernity
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
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dbef3a9
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"The immigration laws that were in force until 1965 were a continuation of earlier laws written to maintain a white majority. However, after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and accommodation, a racially restrictive immigration policy was an embarrassment. The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965--also known as the Hart-Celler Act--abolished national origins quotas and opened immigration to all parts of the world. Its backers, however, emphasized that they did not expect it to have much impact. "Under the proposed bill," explained Senator Edward Kennedy, "the present level of immigration remains substantially the same. Secondly, the ethnic mix will not be upset. Contrary to charges in some quarters, it will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area." The senator suggested that at most 62,000 people a year might immigrate. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law, he also downplayed its impact: "This bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives . . . ." The backers were wrong. In 1996, for example, there were a record 1,300,000 naturalizations 70 and perhaps 90 percent of the new citizens were non-white. Large parts of the country are being transformed by immigration. But the larger point is that "diversity" of the kind that immigration is now said to provide was never proposed as one of the law's benefits. No one dreamed that in just 20 years ten percent of the entire population of El Salvador would have moved to the United States or that millions of mostly Hispanic and Asian immigrants would reduce whites to a racial minority in California in little more than 20 years. In 1965--before diversity had been decreed a strength--Americans would have been shocked by the prospect of demographic shifts of this kind. Whites were close to 90 percent of the American population, and immigration reform would have failed if its backers had accurately predicted its demographic consequences."
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diversity
immigration
race
laws
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Jared Taylor |