We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men. But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A government of laws, and not of men.
Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not of men.
To the extent that laws are founded on morality and on logic, they can lead men's hearts and minds.
The allegiance of the citizen, in the only sense in which the word can be tolerated in a republic, is due to the law. What idea other men may have of a law higher than the supreme law, I know not. Like the notion of the Stoics concerning Fate, it is perfectly incomprehensible.
Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.
All men are not created equal but should be treated as though they were under the law.
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.
Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.
As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.