No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Interpretation
Unwritten traditions and societal norms often hold more power than formal laws.
This quote highlights the idea that the expectations and customs of a society can be more influential and authoritative than any legal statutes. While laws are codified rules meant to govern behavior, it is the unwritten rules, shaped by culture and public sentiment, that frequently dictate actions and interactions within a community.
In practice
During a discussion on social behaviors in a community meeting.
Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in government.
Parliaments have stopped laughing at woman suffrage, and politicians have begun to dodge! It is the inevitable premonition of coming victory.
Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex.
The answer to one is the answer to all. Government by 'the people' is expedient or it is not. If it is expedient, then obviously all the people must be included.
Just as the world war is no white man's war, but every man's war, so is the struggle for woman suffrage no white woman's struggle, but every woman's struggle.
Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a_x000D_ _x000D_ hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond_x000D_ _x000D_ himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.
In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.
Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as is possible, and moves the reader towards him: or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.
I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.
When a man is born...there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.
All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.
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