People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that when people feel oppressed by laws, they may turn to power as their only source of hope and may resist those laws in return.
Thomas Babington Macaulay highlights the relationship between law and power, suggesting that individuals or groups who feel oppressed by the legal system often lose faith in the law and see power as their last refuge. When laws act as barriers to justice or fairness, those affected may become adversarial towards the very laws intended to govern them, indicating a cycle of conflict between power and legal authority.
In practice
This quote could be used in a courtroom debate about the fairness of the legal system.
To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Defense is superior to opulence.
The pleasure of despair. But then, it is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation... ...everything is a mess in which it is impossible to tell what's what, but that despite this impossibility and deception it still hurts you, and the less you can understand, the more it hurts.
Could God exist if nobody else did? No. Thatβs why gods are very avid for worshipers. If there is nobody to worship them, there are no gods. There are as many gods as there are people thinking about God. In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve.
Can one drown in one's element... If fish can drown in water, can human beings suffocate in air?
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