Historical Perspectives

“…governments, which have a regard to the common interest, are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those that regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.” Aristotle, The Politics (4th Century, BCE)

“Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state … is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise ….” Plato, The Laws (4th Century BCE)

“Therefore law means drawing a distinction between just and unjust, formulated in accordance with that most ancient and most important of all things – nature.” Cicero, The Laws, Book 2 (1st Century BCE)

“…whatever law a man makes for another, he should keep for himself.” Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Law from Summa Theologia (13th Century)

“When you hear men talking, all they ever do is speak ill of women. And I don't quite know how they managed to make this law in their favour, or who exactly it was who gave them a greater license to sin than is allowed to us; and if the fault is common to both sexes (as they can hardly deny), why should the blame not be as well? What makes them think they can boast of the same thing that in women brings only shame?” Moderata Fonte (1600)

“Whensoever a man transferreth his right, or renounceth it; it is either in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to himself; or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act: and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself.…“The mutual transferring of right is that which men call CONTRACT.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

“Men being…by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this condition and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one among another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater security against any that are not in it. …When any number of men have so consented to make one community of government, they are thereby incorporated and make one body politic wherein the majority have a right to act and govern the rest.” John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government (1681)

“If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves?” Mary Astell, On Marriage (1700)

“Of great importance to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty; for if once it were left in the power of any the highest magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper, … there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. … To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.” Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1753)

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

“[T]he British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition be just, the British constitution is nothing more nor less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government’s being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend. An empire is a despotism and an emperor a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy.” John Adams, Novanglus,No. VII (1763)

“The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.” Samuel Adams

“To rule is easy, to govern difficult.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“‘Notwithstanding,’ thought I, ‘the many resolutions and prayers I have made in behalf of freedom, I am, this first day of the year 1836, still a slave, still wandering in the depths of a miserable bondage. My faculties and powers of body and soul are not my own, but are the property of a fellow-mortal in no sense superior to me, except that he has the physical power to compel me to be owned and controlled by him. By the combined physical force of the community I am his slave—a slave for life.’ With thoughts like these I was chafed and perplexed, and they rendered me gloomy and disconsolate. The anguish of my mind cannot be written.” Frederick Douglass, Chapter XIX (1836)

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.” Soren Kierkegarrd, Journals, 1848

“It is manifest…that the jury must judge of and try the whole case…free of any dictation or authority on the part of the government. They must judge of the existence of the law; of the true exposition of the law; of the justice of the law; and of the admissibility and weight of all the evidence offered; otherwise the government will have everything its own way; the jury will be mere puppets in the hands of the government; and the trial will be, in reality, a trial by the government, and not a ‘trial by the country.’ By such trials the government will determine its own powers over the people, instead of the people’s determining their own liberties against the government; and it will be an entire delusion to talk, as for centuries we have done, of the trial by jury, as a ‘palladium of liberty,’ or as any protection to the people against the oppression and tyranny of the government.” Lysander Spooner, Trial by Jury (1852)

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

“Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.” Jefferson Davis, 1864

"Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776." Susan B. Anthony

“No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.” Theodore Roosevelt, “State of the Union Address,” December 7, 1903

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule.” H. L. Mencken, “Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks” (1956)

“The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” President Gerald Ford, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, August 12, 1974

“When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.” Pope John Paul II, May 12, 1985

"The rule of law starts at home. But in too many places it remains elusive. Hatred, corruption, violence and exclusion go without redress. The vulnerable lack effective recourse, while the powerful manipulate laws to retain power and accumulate wealth." Kofi Annan in an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 2004

“I am convinced that the majority of American people do understand that we have a moral responsibility to foster the concepts of opportunity, free enterprise, the rule of law, and democracy. They understand that these values are the hope of the world.” Richard Lugar, June 15, 2009

"Uphold the Rule of Law: The rule of law—and our capacity to enforce it—advances our national security and strengthens our leadership. At home, fidelity to our laws and support for our law enforcement community safeguards American citizens and interests, while protecting and advancing our values. Around the globe, it allows us to hold actors accountable, while supporting both international security and the stability of the global economy. America’s commitment to the rule of law is fundamental to our efforts to build an international order that is capable of confronting the emerging challenges of the 21st century." President Barack Obama, 2010

“The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule.” James Bovard (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore)

"... rule of law strengthens the trust of citizens in state institutions and its decisions. And thereby also strengths the social stability of a country.” Angela Merkel (From a speech at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, June 12, 2016)

Additional Quotes

“Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.”  John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Book II (1689)

“‘The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate [citizen], and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.’ This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

“…whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called….” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

“No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.”  Theodore Roosevelt, “State of the Union Address,” December 7, 1903

“The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so he does not wrong his neighbor.”  Theodore Roosevelt, “The Man in the Arena” Speech, April 23, 1910

“‘The law is not a ‘light’ for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind.  The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely.’”  Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (1960)

“Those who believe that humans are born with inalienable rights to life, liberty, equality, and happiness do not understand human nature or nature:  All life is a competition with winners and losers; liberty is, at best, limited by what others do, say and think; no two things in nature are equal; and happiness is unattainable because humans always want what they don’t have or can’t get.”  Anonymous

“The majority does not rule in America, but the minority shouldn’t hijack it.” Glenn Beck

“Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.”  Gerald R. Ford