A Quote by Edward Coke

Force ought to follow justice and not to precede.

Edward Coke

Quote Topics

Follow Force Justice Ought

Quote Author

Edward Coke
English - Businessman
February 1, 1552 - September 3, 1634

In order to protect himself from force, man was obliged to submit to justice. Justice or force: he was compelled to choose between the two masters, so little are we made to be independent.

Luc de Clapiers

Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.

François-René de Chateaubriand

Party action should follow, not precede the creation of a dominant popular sentiment.

Judith Ellen Foster

Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice.

Cornel West

The students I've been with these twenty years are looking for a world where it becomes a little easier to love and a lot harder to hate, where learning nonviolence means that we dedicate our hearts, minds, time, and money to a commitment that the force of love, the force of truth, the force of justice, and the force of organized resistance to corrupt power are seen as sane and the force of fists, guns, armies, and bombs insane.

Colman McCarthy

Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer justice, as we look hereafter to have justice administered to ourselves.

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

The rule of distributive justice is a statement of what ought to be, and what people say ought to be is determined in the long run and with some lag by what they find in fact to be the case.

George C. Homans

Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

Rene Descartes

When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

Rene Descartes

The industrial and social injustice of our era is the tragic aftermath of democracy's overemphasis on freedom as the "right to do whatever you please." No, freedom means the right to do what you ought, and ought implies law, and law implies justice, and justice implies God. So too in war, a nation that fights for freedom divorced from justice has no right to war, because it does not know why it wants to be free, or why it wants anyone else to be free.

Fulton J. Sheen

I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.