Duty

What I did was merely my duty.  Disobeying the laws of the time was just the normal thing to do.

Source: Andree Geulen-Herscovici
Taken From:  Restoring the Republic with Truth and Fearlessness, Karen Kwiatkowski, June 6th 2001


About the Source, taken from the above article:Andree Geulen-Herscovici, an 86-year-old Belgian schoolteacher was recognized by Israel for saving 300 children from the Nazis. In 1942, she witnessed a Gestapo raid on the school. She then joined an underground rescue organization, and for more than two years, she quietly worked with other likeminded people to save these Jewish children from an evil state that would have seen their lives destroyed.
During the ceremony, she said the above.

On the Origins of Social Cooperation

Neither love not charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 6, Human Society: The Individual Within Society, 1949

Reciprocity

Second, the reciprocal performances of the parties must in some sense be equal in value…. We cannot here speak of an exact identity, for it makes no sense at all to exchange, say, a book or idea in return for exactly the same book or idea. The bond of reciprocity unites men, not simply in spite of their differences but because of their differences….

Source: Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law, pp. 23–24, 1964
Taken From: Bruce Benson, The Enterprise of Customary Law, 6/29/2007

Of the Ox and the Lion

It is generally assumed that the erasing of all distinctions will usher in the reign of pure democracy.  But the inability of pure democracy to stand for something intelligible leaves it merely a verbal deception.  If it promises equality before the law, it does no more than empires and monarchies have done and cannot use this as a ground to assert superiority.  If it promises equality of condition, it promises injustice, because one law for the ox and the lion is tyranny.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948 

Justice

There is bitterness in the thought that there may be no hell; for ... if there is no hell, there is no justice.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948 

How to Identify Legal Plunder

See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Source: Frédéric Bastiat, The Law 1849
Taken From: Legal Obedience, Walter Williams, 8/24/2011

Sound Doctrine

We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine

Source: Paul the Apostle in a letter to Timothy, 62-67AD
Taken From:  1st Tim 1:9-10

State Degradation

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

Source: HL Menkcen (Unsourced)

Morality In Government

What moral system should government follow?  The same one individuals follow.  Do not steal. Do not murder. Do not bear false witness. Do not covet. Do not foster vice.  If governments would merely follow the moral law that all religions recognize, we would live in a world of peace, prosperity, and freedom.  The system is called classical liberalism.  Liberty is not complicated.

Source:  Ron Paul, Liberty Defined (pg 211) section on Morality in Government, 2011

Justice

Every man loves justice at another man’s expense.

Source: Anonymous

Laws and Corruption

... laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.

Publius Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117)

Heart of the Law

I have come to see legalism in its pursuit of false purity as an elaborate scheme of grace avoidance.  You can know the law by heart without knowing the heart of it.

Philip Yancy (1997, What's So Amazing About Grace)

On Voir Dire

You could say it's the process by which the system assures that no qualified person serves on a jury – or the process by which we make sure to get the dregs of society's barrel instead of the cream of society's crop.

Louis James 
2010, While Interviewing Doug Casey on Jury Duty, or specifically Voir Dire in this quotes instance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voir_dire#Use_in_the_United_States_of_America

The Law is a Fortress

The Law is a fortress on a hill that armies cannot take or floods wash away. 

The Prophet Muhammed

Public Opinion v Pretense of Governing

I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe.

Thomas Jefferson (Jan. 16. 1787, Letter to Edward Carrington)

Just/Unjust Law

One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?  The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.  I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws.  One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.  Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Martin Luther King Jr. (April 16, 1963)

The Law

Today it is widely accepted, as a matter of fact, that Government Is The Law. Just as a "divine" king once could say, "I am the state," governments today everywhere say they are the law, even that they are the people.

Karl Hess (The Lawless State, 1969)

Life, Liberty, Property and Law

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Frédéric Bastiat  (The Law par. L.34, 1850)

Property and Society

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of G0d, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.

John Adams 

the Law and Morality

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Frédéric Bastiat  (The Law par. L.34, 1850)