Quote

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.

William Blackstone

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Blackstone
Age: 56 †
Born: 1723
Born: July 10
Died: 1780
Died: February 14
Barrister
Judge
Jurist
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
the City
Sir William Blackstone
Ten
Justice
Fairness
Suffering
Innocence
Persons
Escape
Better
Ethics
Guilty
Innocent
Suffer

More quotes by William Blackstone

Image
Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.
William Blackstone
Image
There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property.
William Blackstone
Image
Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted. The request for the meaning of a religious belief is logically prior to the question of accepting that belief on faith or to the question of whether that belief constitutes knowledge.
William Blackstone
Image
In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.
William Blackstone
Image
Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other.
William Blackstone
Image
The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind.
William Blackstone
Image
Man must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator. This will of his Maker is called the Law of Nature. This Law of Nature is superior to any other. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.
William Blackstone
Image
The Bible has always been regarded as part of the Common Law of England.
William Blackstone
Image
So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it no, not even for the general good of the whole community.
William Blackstone
Image
Men was formed for society, and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it.
William Blackstone
Image
By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law, that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage.
William Blackstone
Image
The law rarely hesitates in declaring its own meaning but the Judges are frequently puzzled to find out the meaning of others.
William Blackstone
Image
Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people.
William Blackstone
Image
Trial by jury is a privilege of the highest and most beneficial nature [and] our most important guardian both of public and private liberty. The liberties of England cannot but subsist so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, ... but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it.
William Blackstone
Image
The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.
William Blackstone
Image
Mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity.
William Blackstone
Image
[Self-defense is] justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the laws of society.
William Blackstone
Image
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.
William Blackstone
Image
The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of . . . the sacred and inviolable rights of private property.
William Blackstone
Image
No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God
William Blackstone