It will never make any difference to a hero what the laws are.
* * * * *
For what avail the plough or sail
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
* * * * *
The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes
in the twisting.
* * * * *
Our distrust is very expensive. The money we spend for courts and
prisons is very ill laid out.
* * * * *
Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.
What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in
the word _politics_ which now for ages has signified _cunning_,
intimating that the State is a trick?
* * * * *
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but
names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what
is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to
carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if everything were
titular and ephemeral but him. I am ashamed to think how easily we
capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead
institutions.