“Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man’s origin, capacity and responsibility.”

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.

The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrong from its hostile and unwilling serfs.

I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man — public opinion.

The purpose of life is to live it.

Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.

We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved.

To bribe a farmer not to plant 38 acres with corn … seven weeks of salary for a Customs man assigned to save us from the terror of high-quality, low priced foreign TV sets, or the subsidy on 6,000 bushels of wheat to prop up the Soviet regime.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

The National Targeting Center in Virginia run by Customs and Border Protection checks the background of every traveler who seeks to enter the country.

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.

Whatever may be the laws and customs of a country, women always give the tone to morals.