Henry Ward Beecher Law Quotations

Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.

Any law that takes hold of a man's daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.

A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.

It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work; it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.

If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.

The law is a battery, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obey them.

Christ certainly did come to destroy the law and the prophets.

Prayer is often an argument of laziness: "Lord, my temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it would be a great task for me to correct it; and wilt thou be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along easier?" If prayer was answered under such circumstances, independent of action of natural laws, it would be paying a premium on indolence.

Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.

It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants.

There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development; to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies.

Take all the robes of all the good judges that have ever lived on the face of the earth, and they would not be large enough to cover the iniquity of one corrupt judge.

Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law

That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.

Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves.

Providence is but another name for natural law. Natural law itself would go out in a minute if it were not for the divine thought that is behind it.