When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are b… — Benjamin Disraeli Quote #112

About this quote

What does it mean?: Disraeli claims that laws are unnecessary when people are virtuous but ineffective when people are corrupt.
In plain terms: Laws do not work well when people are corrupt.
What can you take from it?: Morality is more effective than legislation.

Laws are still necessary to enforce norms even in moral societies.

All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil.
Permalink to quote #111
No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influe…
Permalink to quote #113
The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
Permalink to quote #110

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society…
Alexander SolzhenitsynAlexander Solzhenitsyn quote #42
The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never…
Vaclav HavelVaclav Havel quote #60
Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder - just as animals are…
Andrew SullivanAndrew Sullivan quote #1