"Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are."
— Benjamin Franklin

"The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy."
— William F. Buckley Jr.

"Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use."
— Richard Nixon

"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana."
— Jimmy Carter

"Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."
— Carl Sagan

"But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much."
— Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)

"The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws. (from "Rediscovering Lost Values")"
— Martin Luther King Jr. (A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.)

"The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be."
— Laozi

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
— Plato

"Remember: Murphy was an optimist!"
— Unknown

"Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong."
— William Ewart Gladstone

"Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing."
— Rousseau

"In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract)

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."
— Alexander Pope

"Then a lawyer said, But what of our laws, master? And he answered: 'You delight in laying down laws. Yet you delight more in breaking them.'"
— Kahlil Gibrán