There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past.

—Noam Chomsky

Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.

—J. Edgar Hoover

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

 —Bob Dylan

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.

 —Learned Hand

In university they don’t tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

—Doris Lessing

A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.

 —Voltaire

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.

 —Benjamin Disraeli

The United States is a nation of laws badly written and randomly enforced.

 —Frank Zappa

Fragile as reason is limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that’s all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.

 —Felix Frankfurter

Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.                

—Albert Einstein