As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.
— Antonin Scalia
Unusual Natural Law quotations
The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics.
The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator.
Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon.
Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur.
In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.
Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.
Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid . . . Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development.
When the righteous rule, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.
There is no god and there is no soul.
Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed and natural law or permanent moral absolutes.
Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.
God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.
The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
There's a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.
My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.
The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.
My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong.
It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.
Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things ... the first is the love of activity... The second fundamental thing is independence.
As a race, the African is inferior to the white man.
Subordination to the white man is his normal condition. He is not his equal by nature and cannot be made so by human laws or human institutions. Our system, therefore, so far as regards this inferior race, rests upon this great immutable law of nature.
The predominant thought or the mental attitude is the magnet, and the law is that like attracts like, consequently, the mental attitude will invariably attract such conditions as correspond to its nature.
Our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life.
What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction of humanity's use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it's not the laws of nature
Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.
The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.
It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.
Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences.
The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity.
We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less than an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed.
It is an enduring truth, which can never be altered, that every infraction of the Law of nature must carry its punitive consequences with it. We can never get beyond that range of cause and effect.
Self defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges everyone to resist the first approaches of tyranny.
If you do something once, people will call it an accident.
If you do it twice, they call it a coincidence. But do it a third time and you've just proven a natural law!