Arbitrary Rule Quotes

Law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country; and the least appearance of an encroachment on those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil exceedingly.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

There is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.

I'll have you understand I am running this court, and the law hasn't got a damn thing to do with it!

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

When a president makes up law as he goes, no one knows what the law is anymore.

The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.

Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.

Terrorists can endanger some of us, but the war on terror endangers us all. How much more can the Constitution be diminished before it is completely replaced by arbitrary government power?

A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.

The state should look into this, as other nations do: see to it that nobles do not take the lives of their subjects at will, or burden them with unjust toil - as if they were dumb cattle!

In Russia, whatever be the appearance of things, violence and arbitrary rule is at the bottom of them all. Tyranny rendered calm by the influence of terror is the only kind of happiness which this government is able to afford its people.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this court's decision making

Extreme law is often extreme injustice.

It is a very bad idea for governments to create arbitrary and unfair outcomes, or outcomes resulting from the passions and whims of the government rather than from the law, just because they have the power to do so.

A society run by bureaucrats issuing diktats can’t function, because there is no recourse to these apparatchiks. There is no remedy for reform.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.

Openness is the natural enemy of arbitrariness.

I can hardly sit on the bench and restrain my indignation at the tyrannous methods of the Department of Justice …. More lawless proceedings are hard to imagine.

Governments unaccountable to law are tyrannies, whatever they might call themselves, no matter how exceptional and indispensable they declare themselves to be.