A Quote by Lysander Spooner

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood a truth.

Lysander Spooner

Quote Topics

Absurd Attempt Crime Declare Falsehood Government Nature Punish Things Truth Very Vice Would Would Be

Quote Author

Lysander Spooner
American - Philosopher
January 19, 1808 - May 14, 1887

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.

Lysander Spooner

There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.

Leonardo da Vinci

Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.

C. S. Lewis

There is no such thing as absolute truth and absolute falsehood. The scientific mind should never recognise the perfect truth or the perfect falsehood of any supposed theory or observation. It should carefully weigh the chances of truth and error and grade each in its proper position along the line joining absolute truth and absolute error.

Henry Augustus Rowland

I am the executioner. When the crime is committed and the Lord God does not take vengeance nor does the exalted State move to declare and then to punish, I say when these bitter events happen, then comes the time for the executioner to declare himself or herself as the case may be. I have waited long enough. So the time has come, and I declare myself the executioner. The three criminals are hereby sentenced to death. By fire. By earth. By water.

Jay Bennett

The t-shirts that declare 'Girls Rule the World' offer an empirical falsehood, but at least the aspiration is there.

Faith Salie

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.

George Eliot

Withhold no part of the precious truth, but speak what you know and declare what you have seen. Do not allow the toil or darkness or possible unbelief of your friends to dissuade you. Let us rise and march to the place of duty, and there declare what great things God has shown to our soul.

Alistair Begg

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

William Shenstone

I stand for truth. Truth will never ally itself with falsehood. Even if all the world should be against me, Truth must prevail in the end.

Swami Vivekananda

If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.

Michel de Montaigne

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retributions.

Louis D. Brandeis

In order to understand the interrelation of truth and falsehood in life, a man must understand falsehood in himself, the constant incessant lies he tells himself.

G. I. Gurdjieff

Reason forbade me many things which, Instinctively, my nature was attracted to; And a perpetual loss I feel if, knowing, I believe a falsehood or deny the truth.