Quote

The only thing that can set aside a law as wrong is a better law, or an idea of a better law. And the only thing that an give a law the quality of better or worse is the concrete result which it promotes or fails to promote.

William Ernest Hocking

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William Ernest Hocking
Age: 92 †
Born: 1873
Born: August 10
Died: 1966
Died: June 12
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Cleveland
Ohio
W.E. Hocking
Idea
Concrete
Give
Worse
Ideas
Result
Better
Failing
Giving
Results
Promotes
Thing
Quality
Fails
Law
Promote
Wrong
Aside

More quotes by William Ernest Hocking

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This merely formal conceiving of the facts of one's own wretchedness is at the same time a departure from them--placing them in the object. It is not idle, therefore, to observe reflexively that in that very Thought, one has separated himself from them, and is no longer that which empirically he still sees himself to be.
William Ernest Hocking
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We cannot swing up a rope which is attached only to our own belt.
William Ernest Hocking
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Nothing is more evident, I venture to think, as a result of two or three thousand years of social philosophizing, than that society must live and thrive by way of the native impulses of individual human beings.
William Ernest Hocking
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A person who wills to have a good will, already has a good will--in its rudiments. There is solid satisfaction in knowing that the mere desire to get out of an old habit is a material advance upon the condition of submergence in that habit. The longest step toward cleanliness is made when one gains--nothing but dissatisfaction with dirt.
William Ernest Hocking
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Mr. Rihani, we met once a thousand years ago and we may not meet again for another thousand years.
William Ernest Hocking
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Art is life, plus caprice.
William Ernest Hocking
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Principle III: Presumptive rights are the conditions under which individual powers normally develop.
William Ernest Hocking
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However rich we may become in knowledge of the deeper causes of historical results, we forgo all understanding of history if we forget this inner continuity,--i.e., the conscious intentions of the participants in history-making and their consciously known successes.
William Ernest Hocking
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Without good-will, no man has any presumptive right, except the right or opportunity to change his will, so long as there is hope of it.
William Ernest Hocking
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Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.
William Ernest Hocking
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Principle I: Legal rights are presumptive rights.
William Ernest Hocking
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Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality.
William Ernest Hocking
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Every social need, such as the need for friendship, must be a party to its own satisfaction: I cannot passively find my friend as a ready-made friend a ready-made human being he may be, but his friendship for me I must help to create by my own active resolve.
William Ernest Hocking
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Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished the others can only be hurt.
William Ernest Hocking
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And indeed, no man has found his religion until he has found that for which he must sell his goods and his life.
William Ernest Hocking
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It is right, or absolute right, that an individual should develop the powers that are in him. He may be said to have a natural right to become what he is capable of becoming. This is his only natural right.
William Ernest Hocking
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No religion is a true religion that does not make men tingle to their finger tips with a sense of infinite hazard.
William Ernest Hocking
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Pure community is a matter of no interest to any will but a community which pursues a common good is of supreme interest to all wills and what we have here said is that whatever the nature of that common good ... it must contain the development of individual powers, as a prior condition for all other goods.
William Ernest Hocking
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Principle II: The presumptions of the law are creative presumptions:: they are aimed at conditions to be brought about, and only for that reason ignore conditions which exist.
William Ernest Hocking