19th-century Jurist Quotes

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Ferdinand Lassalle

A. V. Dicey

Jerome Frank

John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune

See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

That the state is an entity and in fact the decisive entity rests upon its political character.

Is it surprising that modern English land law should resemble a chaos rather than a system?

Our constitution, in short, is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.

The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

Whoever obstructs scientific inquiry clamps down the safety valve of public opinion, and puts the State in train for an explosion.

Ferdinand Lassalle

The anonymous writer, who, in 1692, published the first English essay "Of the Laws of Chance," thought it necessary to protest in his preface that the design of his book was "not to teach the art of playing at dice, but to deal with them as with other epidemic distempers, and perhaps persuade a raw squire to keep his money in his pocket."

John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune