This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Now the perfect accordance of the will to the moral law is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of sensible world is capable at any moment of his existence.
The whole course of our life must be subject to moral maxims; but this is impossible, unless with the moral law, which is a mere idea, reason connects an efficient cause which ordains to all conduct which conforms to the moral law an issue either in this or another life, which is in exact conformity with our highest aims.
Aims | Cause | Conduct | Conformity | Law | Life | Life | Maxims | Moral law | Reason |
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.
Admiration | Awe | Law | Mind | Moral law |
That in the order of ends, man (and with him every rational being) is an end in himself, that is, that he can never be used merely as a means by any (not even by God) without being at the same time an end also himself, that therefore humanity in our person must be holy to ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the subject of the moral law, in other words, of that which is holy in itself, and on account of which and in agreement with which alone can anything be termed holy. For this moral law is founded on the autonomy of his will, as a free will which by its universal laws must necessarily be able to agree with that to which it is to submit itself.
Ends | Free will | God | Humanity | Law | Man | Means | Moral law | Order | Time | Will | Words |
The determination of what constitutes right in war, is the most difficult problem of the right of nations and international law. It is very difficult even to form a conception of such a right, or to think of any law in this lawless state without falling into a contradiction.
Contradiction | Determination | Law | Nations | Right | War | Think |
Act only on that maxim [intention] whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature. Always act so as to treat humanity, whether in yourself or in others, as an end in itself, never merely as a means. Act always as if to bring about, and as a member of, a Kingdom of Ends [that is, an ideal community in which everyone is always moral].
Action | Ends | Humanity | Intention | Law | Means | Nature | Time | Will |
Coercion is the very basis of every law in the universe, human or divine. A law is not law without coercion behind it.
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving old as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.
Association | Law | Men | Riches | Wealth | Will | World | Riches | Association | Old |
This is the law of the universe: if you wish that others should spare you, spare others.
Property and law are born together, and i.e. together. Before laws were made there was no property; take away laws, and property ceases.
Jean Anouilh, fully Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
Law | Obligation | Sacred |
John Holt, fully John Caldwell Holt
Holt's Law - All jobs are easy to the person who doesn't have to do them.
Law |
In my many years, I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is congress.
If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness, a horrid thought!
Anarchy | Hell | Law | Madness | Memory | Nature | Reason | Thought | Understanding | Will |
Extremity of right is wrong... extremity of law is extremity of wrong.
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
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 retribution.
Administration | Anarchy | Contempt | Crime | Government | Law | Man | Means | Order | Government |