Quotes About Precedent

In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.

Ideas without precedent are generally looked upon with disfavor and men are shocked if their conceptions of an orderly world challenged.

European sense. No one can predict how it will end because there is no precedent for it.

Custom, that is before all law; Nature, that is above all art.

This melodrama differed from others in that it was not written, it was to be played impromptu, and only once; after that it would be precedent, and would determine the destinies of mankind perhaps for centuries. Each of the actors hoped to write it his way, and no living man could say what the dénouement would be.

Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

I tend to agree with those who say that a justice's duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it.

Stability means respecting precedents.

The precedent is that civilizations collapse, and everything's stacked up for this one to go, and it's a mess when it happens.

the idea of radical equality Kassar cited in response to Crane's request—programmer being equal to assembly line worker—had a precedent.

Years later, my friend, Attorney W. T. Skoll of Spokane, Washington, showed me the new volume of the Federal Reporter, Vol. 61, p. 163, containing the decisions rendered on the Mudsill mine-salting case, and Mr. Skoll informed me that this was the only mine-salting case ever passed on by the Circuit Judges of the United States. Thus did the Mudsill mine-salting operation end, and become part of our law history to be used as a precedent in future mine-salting cases.

Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.

I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up. In numerous instances, the precedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated...

We now see all over Europe, and particularly in England, the curious phenomenon of a nation looking one way, and the government the other - the one forward and the other backward. If governments are to go on by precedent, while nations go on by improvement, they must at last come to a final separation; and the sooner and the more civilly they determine this point, the better.

I have always held it an opinion (making it also my practice) that it is better to obey a bad law, making use at the same time of every argument to shew its errors and procure its repeal, than forcibly to violate it; because the precedent of breaking a bad law might weaken the force, and lead to a discretionary violation, of those which are good.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine. Paris, July, 1795.

Hij die zijn eigen vrijheid veilig wil stellen, moet zelfs zijn vijand tegen onderdrukking beschermen, want als hij die plicht schendt, schept hij een precedent dat op hemzelf terug zal slaan.

Relying on the maxim that Principle is not bound by Precedent we should not limit our expectations of the future; and if our speculations lead us to the conclusion that we have reached a point where we are not only able, but also required, by the law of our own being, to take a more active part in our personal evolution than heretofore, this discovery will afford us a new outlook upon life and widen our horizon with fresh interests and brightening hopes.

here we were with a new suspect, but his introduction did not seem to have produced much effect on the three investigators. This, I reflected, accorded with precedent, for investigators in these cases are never, by any chance, to be taken by surprise.