"But if it should fall out otherwise (which God forbid); if as you have been valiant in war you should grow debauched in peace, you that have had such visible demonstrations of the goodness of God to yourselves; and that you should not have learned by so eminent, so remarkable an example before your eyes, to fear God, and work righteousness; for my part, I shall easily grant and confess (for I cannot deny it), you will find in a little time, that God's displeasure against you will be greater than his grace and favor have been to yourselves, which you have had larger experience of than any other nation under heaven."—Milton.
"Perhaps, too, there may be a certain degree of danger that a succession of artful and ambitious rulers may, by gradual and well-timed advances, finally erect an independent government on the subversion of liberty. Should this danger exist at all, it is prudent to guard against it, especially when the precaution can do no injury."—Madison.
"The community that by concert, open or secret, among its citizens denies to a portion of its members their plain rights under the law has severed the only safe bond of social order and prosperity. The evil works, from a bad centre, both ways. It demoralizes those who practise it, and destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the efficiency of the law as a safe protector."—President Harrison.
"An unlawful expedient cannot become a permanent condition of government. If the educated and influential classes in a community either practise or connive at the systematic violation of laws that seem to cross their convenience, what can they expect when the lesson, that convenience or a supposed class-interest is a sufficient cause for lawlessness, has been well learned by the ignorant classes?"—Id.
"A community where law is the rule of conduct, and where courts, not mobs, execute its penalties, is the only attractive field for business investments and honest labor."—Id.
"Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy."—Lao-Tze.
"No matter how unimportant the breach may seem; though small at first, it will widen like a crevasse in the Mississippi, until the whole stream of arbitrary power goes rushing through it. Besides, the grade of a crime is not measured by the extent of the particular mischief. Forgery is forgery, whether the sum obtained by it be great or small, and murder is not mitigated by showing that the victim was short of stature."—J. Black.
"'Twill be recorded for a precedent;
And many an error, by the same example
Will rush into the state: it cannot be."—Shakespeare.
