"Useless laws weaken the necessary laws." – Montesquieu

“Roman laws tended to be long and complex - one of Rome's most enduring legacies to the world is cumbersome and tortuous legal prose.” ― Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life Of A Colossus

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” ― Plato

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)

Fresh off the press.

"Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught."

• Honore de Balzac

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck, Prussian statesman (1815-1898)

“Laws are silent in times of war.”
― Cicero

“Politicians are not born; they are excreted.”
― Cicero

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
― Cicero

“How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?” ― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.” ― Baruch Spinoza

“It comes as a great shock…to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.” ― James Baldwin

“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.” ― Henry Wallace

“The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced. - ”Frank Zappa

“Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?” ― Camille Paglia

I became a policeman because I wanted to be in a business where the customer is always wrong.
—Unnamed officer quoted by Arlene Heath

“The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.” ― Heinrich Himmler, was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Nazi Germany.