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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

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William Blackstone
Age: 56 †
Born: 1723
Born: July 10
Died: 1780
Died: February 14
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Jurist
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the City
Sir William Blackstone
Every
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Tyranny
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of . . . the sacred and inviolable rights of private property.
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No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God
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That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution.
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[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.
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The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband.
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Law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people.
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Men was formed for society, and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it.
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If [the legislature] will positively enact a thing to be done, the judges are not at liberty to reject it, for that were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government.
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The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence and ornament it is its ancient and natural strength, - the floating bulwark of our island.
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The sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other nor is there any branch of learning but may be helped and improved by assistance drawn from other arts.
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Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
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Gaming is a kind of tacit confession that the company engaged therein do in general exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes, and therefore they cast lots to determine upon whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer.
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Mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity.
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The most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it or the cause which moved the legislator to enact it. for when this reason ceased, the law itself ought likewise to cease with it.
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Free men have arms slaves do not.
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Punishments of unreasonable severity, especially where indiscriminately afflicted, have less effect in preventing crimes, and amending the manners of a people, than such as are more merciful in general, yet properly intermixed with due distinctions of severity.
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Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws.
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