These unlawful quotes will inspire you. Unlawful, in a way that is not allowed by law or not conforming to, permitted by, or recognized by law or rules.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and encouraging unlawful quotes, unlawful sayings, and unlawful proverbs.
Best Unlawful Quotes
- “If anyone has engaged unlawful activity, they should be held to account with the full force of the law.” ~ Tim Soutphommasane
- “What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?” ~ James Madison
- “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “In addition, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act provides protection for those in the firearms industry from lawsuits arising out of the criminal or unlawful acts of people who misuse their products.” ~ Bob Ney
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“Microsoft is engaging in unlawful predatory practices that go well beyond the scope of fair competition.” ~ Orrin Hatch
- “While many of the established media make losses or go bankrupt, WikiLeaks has survived a major conflict with a superpower, including an unlawful economic blockade by its banks and credit card companies and the detention of its editor. We have no debts. We have not had to fire staff. We have never lost a court case related to our publishing. We have never been forced to censor. Adversity has hardened us.” ~ Julian Assange
- “When you speak, speak the truth; perform when you promise; discharge your trust… Withhold your hands from striking, and from taking that which is unlawful and bad.” ~ Abdul Kalam
- “The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less that the right to speak out or the right to travel is, in truth, a “personal” right.” ~ Potter Stewart
- “The right response when, in the army, you are given an unlawful order, is to refuse that order. The right response of a chief executive in this state and in this nation, when faced with an order by a court that he conscientiously believes violates the constitution he is sworn to respect, is to refuse their order!” ~ Alan Keyes
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“The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.” ~ Anthony Kennedy
- “He is not of us who is not affectionate to the little ones, and does not respect the old; and he is not of us, who does not order which is lawful, and prohibits that which is unlawful.” ~ Muhammad
- “In some respects, inside information is a form of financial steroid. It is unfair: it is offensive; it is unlawful; and it puts a black mark on the entire enterprise.” ~ Preet Bharara
- “It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.” ~ Pope Leo XIII
- “If two individuals enter into a contract to commit trespass, theft, robbery or murder upon a third, the contract is unlawful and void, simply because it is a contract to violate natural justice, or men’s natural rights.” ~ Lysander Spooner
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“It is unlawful to add anything to the words of Holy Scripture regarding the sense.” ~ Thomas Aquinas
- “[Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them.” ~ John Locke
- “Unlawful desires are punished after the effect of enjoying, but impossible desires are punished in the desire itself.” ~ Philip Sidney
- “As civilization progresses, we should improve our laws basically, not superficially. Many things that are lawful are highly immoral and some things which are moral are unlawful.” ~ Henry Latham Doherty
- “I was always unlawful; I broke the law when I was born because my parents weren’t married.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
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“It was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.” ~ Frederick Douglass
- “Unlawful pleasure, trenching on another’s rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasureits hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave forever.” ~ Charlotte Bronte
- “If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.” ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- “Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
- “Wouldst thou know the lawfulness of the action which thou desirest to undertake, let thy devotion recommend it to Divine blessing: if it be lawful, thou shalt perceive thy heart encouraged by thy prayer; if unlawful, thou shalt find thy prayer discouraged by thy heart. That action is not warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, having succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving.” ~ Francis Quarles
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“The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.” ~ John Locke
- “What is lawful is undesirable; what is unlawful is very attractive.
[Lat., Quod licet est ingratum quod non licet acrius urit.]” ~ Ovid - “Some of the nations of Europe who believe in the one wife system have actually forbidden a plurality of wives by their laws; and the consequences are that the whole country among them is overrun with the most abominable practices: adulteries and unlawful connections through all their villages, towns, cities, and country places to a most fearful extent.” ~ Orson Pratt
- “The fruition of what is unlawful must be followed by remorse. The core sticks in the throat after the apple is eaten, and the sated appetite loathes the interdicted pleasure for which innocence was bartered.” ~ Jane Porter
- “Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their business interests against unlawful invasion…. The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought not to be made legitimate.” ~ William Howard Taft
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“We go after unlawful activities.” ~ Paul Watson
- “It is difficult for me to talk about some of these things without reliving the extreme emotions and loss one always feels for the untimely deaths of acquaintances, family, and friends, all because they stood up against the unlawful tyranny of non-Indian America.” ~ Leonard Peltier
- “To be a good detective you must also think like a crook, an immoral, unethical or unlawful person” ~ Robert Kiyosaki
- “No person shall be restrained of his liberty but by regular process from a court of justice, authorized by a general law. . . . On complaint of an unlawful imprisonment to any judge whatsoever, he shall have the prisoner immediately brought before him and shall discharge him if his imprisonment be unlawful. The officer in whose custody the prisoner is shall obey the order of the judge, and both judge and officer shall be responsible civilly and criminally for a failure of duty herein.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “[Barack] Obama believes you can hold enemy combatants, unlawful enemy combatants at Gitmo without a criminal trial because this is law of war detention.” ~ Chris Matthews
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“The line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive.” ~ Aristotle
- “And what I tell people is this – as a citizen of this country, there are certain rights that are given to you. Officer Encinia’s decision to forcibly remove Sandy from her vehicle, which predicated on the fact that he asked her to do something – he did not lawfully order her to do something – to which she responded with a question. And for that – for that – I celebrate her because during a time where so many people would have remained silent she stood up for herself, and she invoked the rights that are due to her, and that is not unlawful.” ~ Sharon Cooper
- “Saying that the origin of the Islamic State (IS) is within the Muslim Brotherhood organization only strengthens IS. This is what the Israeli government asserts when claiming that Hamas and IS are the exact same thing. By saying so, the historical resistance [against the Israeli occupation] is viewed as unlawful, called extremism and terrorism.” ~ Tariq Ramadan
- “I could have spoken from Rhode Island where I have been staying … But I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson, and of Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the action I was compelled today to make and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders of the federal court at Little Rock can be executed without unlawful interference.” (On sending troops to enforce integration in Little Rock AR High School)” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “And I profess still, that whatsoever the church of England (the church, I say, not every doctor) shall forbid me to say in matter of faith, I shall abstain from saying it, excepting this point, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for my sins. As for other doctrines, I think it unlawful, if the church define them, for any member of the church to contradict them.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“These guidelines contemplate a policy that will grant special benefits to illegal immigrants based on their unlawful presence in the country.” ~ Mike Lee
- “There is no such thing as unlawful censorship in the home. Movies, magazines, television, videos, the Internet, and other media are there as guests and should only be welcomed when they are appropriate for family enjoyment.” ~ M. Russell Ballard
- “I am ever Thine. If Thou cast me out, who shall take me in? If Thou disregard me, who shall look on me? More canst Thou remit, than I commit; more canst Thou spare than I offend. Let not hurtful pleasures overcome me; at the least let not any perverse habit overwhelm me; From evil and unlawful desires; From vain, hurtful, impure imaginations; from the illusions of evil spirits; from pollutions of soul and of body; Good Lord, deliver me.” ~ Lancelot Andrewes
- “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge’ took a year to record; that’s why the playing on it might sound somewhat labored. ‘Balance,’ on the other hand, was written and recorded in only four months, so the whole process was quicker and more immediate.” ~ Eddie Van Halen
- “The customs of the Jews are base and abominable and owe their persistence to their depravity. Jews are extremely loyal to one another, always ready to show compassion, but towards every other people, they feel only hate and enmity. As a race (the Jews are not a race, because they have mingled with the other races to the point that they are only a people, not a race), they are prone to lust; among themselves nothing is unlawful.” ~ Tacitus
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“Pigeon racing is a lousy, greedy, and often unlawful activity. One thing that it is not is kind to birds.” ~ Ingrid Newkirk
- “Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole, but under our Constitution, there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution’s focus upon the individual. …To pursue the concept of racial entitlement – even for the most admirable and benign of purposes – is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.” ~ Antonin Scalia
- “The Three Wiseman: The weather has been awful, The countryside is dreary, Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock, Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help along Yours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners, that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, and miss our wives, our books, our dogs, but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are. To discover how to be human now Is the reason we follow this star.” ~ W. H. Auden
- “For when God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but he warns us against the commission of those beings which are esteemed lawful among men….Therefore, with regard to this precept of God, there ought to be no exception at all, but that it is always unlawful to put to death a man, whom God willed to be a sacred animal.” ~ Lactantius
- “If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America – even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles.” ~ Alberto J. Mora
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“Those who do unlawful acts are no more sinners in the eyes of God than we who think them.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
- “Even if we don’t have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific.” ~ Paul Davies
- “[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue’s game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!” ~ Adam Sedgwick
- “It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself… Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself… Life is God’s gift to man and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God… for it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life.” ~ Thomas Aquinas
- “Beware of injustice, for oppression will be darkness on the Day of Resurrection; and beware of stinginess because it doomed those who were before you. It incited them to shed blood and treat the unlawful as lawful.” ~ Muhammad
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“Having forbidden all unlawful marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men.” ~ Eusebius
- “I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions.” ~ Charles Bukowski
- “The oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it; if unlawful, bindeth not at all, though it be confirmed with an oath.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Intervention in Syria is not an option. President Obama has already helped foment this civil war and supported the al-Qaeda jihadists. This is an explosive region, and more US intervention means more people will die. We should be choosing peace – not a new conflict. More so than anyone else, my supporters know that America cannot afford another unlawful, immoral war in the Middle East. Stand with me and tell President Obama to stay out of Syria.” ~ Ron Paul
- “I have never said that people “should” engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy.” ~ Ward Churchill
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“The great events of the world take place in the brain.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the Chancellors of God.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “I ask the citizens of this Republic whether such a state of things is to be suffered to pass unnoticed, and the hearts of widows, orphans, and patriots to be broken, and their wrongs left without redress? No! I invoke the genius of our Constitution. I appeal to the patriotism of Americans to stop this unlawful and unholy procedure; and pray that God may defend this nation from the dreadful effects of such outrages.” ~ Joseph Smith, Jr.
- “The mere possession of monopoly power, and the concomitant charging of monopoly prices, is not only not unlawful, it is an important element of the free-market system. The opportunity to charge monopoly prices – at least for a short period – is what attracts ‘business acumen’ in the first place; it induces risk-taking that produces innovation and economic growth.” ~ Antonin Scalia
- “I met Cindy [Sheehan] near Crawford, Texas. I went out to personally thank her for waiting patiently by the road in front of George and Laura Bush’s ranch for an answer from her President as to why and for what her son and others had been sacrificed in the unlawful invasion and occupation of Iraq.” ~ Viggo Mortensen
- “After the unlawful decision to recognize Kosovo, everyone expected Russia to respond by recognizing the independence and sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This is true, this is how it was. Everyone was waiting for Russia’s decision. And we had the moral right to make it but we did not. We were more than restrained. I don’t even want to comment on it. In truth, we “swallowed” it.” ~ Vladimir Putin
