At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality—law is something which is shaped and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. This is not the case. The opposite is true: morality is higher than law! Law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth, and present it in the form of law. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes we have a mere caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned.
— Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWe still don't have a good word to describe what is missing in Cameroon, indeed in poor countries across the world. But we are starting to understand what it is. Some people call it 'social capital, or maybe 'trust'. Others call it 'the rule of law', or 'institutions'. But these are just labels. The problem is that Cameroon, like other poor countries, is a topsy-turvy world in which it's in most people's interest to take action that directly or indirectly damages everyone else.
— Tim HarfordIn a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is undermined, what the general masses feel tend to become the common rule.
— Ernest Agyemang YeboahThey criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.
— Calvin CoolidgeWhen the Rule of Law disappears, we are ruled by the whims of men.
— Tiffany MadisonCivil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it...In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did.
— Howard ZinnWhen you obey the rules, the rules obey you.
— Ernest Agyemang YeboahWhen justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.
— Alexis de TocquevilleLets reflect the hopes of the nations under oppression, injustice and brutality. All they see is Unknown suffering Of an empty heart and soul and thus their suffering is unknown. We cannot do everything; but still we can do something. Lend a hand to support the suffering ones.
— Auliq IceA state which savagely represses or persecutes sections of its people cannot in my view be regarded as observing the rule of law, even if the transport of the persecuted minority to the concentration camp or the compulsory exposure of female children on the mountainside is the subject of detailed laws duly enacted and scrupulously observed.
— Tom Bingham