A Quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton
We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws.
Related Quotes
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them.
The object of a Constitution is to restrain the Government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals.
Laws don't really restrain people. Ninety-eight percent of people follow a virtuous course with or without laws.
We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them.
Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don't need them, and the bad people don't obey them.
When I am a good guy on TV, my character tends to be almost identical to how I am as a real person. However, as a bad guy, I get to be the opposite. I get to be a jerk. I get to talk trash, I get to say all the things that I'm thinking but have to restrain myself from saying out of respect or decency.
For as good habits of the people require good laws to support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits on the part of the people.
When it comes to partisan politics, everyone is a hypocrite. And all they care about is whether it hurts or helps them ... Is it good or bad for the Democrats? Is it good or bad for the Republicans? Is it good or bad for Jews, or good or bad for blacks, or is it good or bad for women? Is it good or bad for men? Is it good or bad for gays? That's the way people think about issues today. There is very little discussion of enduring principles.
That we should obey laws whether good or bad is a new-fangled notion. There was no such thing in former days. The people disregarded those laws they did not like and suffered the penalties for their breach.
You can have all the gun control laws in the country, but if you don't enforce them, people are going to find a way to protect themselves. We need to recognize that bad people are doing bad things with these weapons. It's not the law-abiding citizens, it's not the person who uses it as a hobby.
I know some say, let us have good laws, and no matter for the men that execute them: but let them consider, that though good laws do well, good men do better: for good laws may want good men, and be abolished or evaded [invaded in Franklin's print] by ill men; but good men will never want good laws, nor suffer ill ones.
The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.
You know, I think a lot of times what happens when we as actors know we're playing a bad guy is we get into bad guy mode. You know what, man? In real life, bad people do good things too and good people do bad things. So you don't necessarily have to be the stereotypical bad guy to still do bad things.
With bad laws and good civil servants it's still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can't help.
What makes 'The Wire' a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In 'The Wire,' bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.
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