Hofstadters Law Quotes

It always takes longer than you expect, even if you take Hofstadter's Law into account. ~ Douglas Hofstadter

Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God. ~ Bayard Rustin

For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! ~ Stefan Zweig

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying. ~ Samuel Butler

Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Though Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, yet not from the command of it, ~ Matthew Henry

The first law of computer science: Every problem is solved by yet another indirection. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

A rhyme turns an idea into a law; and, in a sense, each poem is a linguistic codex. ~ Joseph Brodsky

The laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time. ~ C.S. Lewis

There is one law for rich and poor alike, which prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges. ~ Jo Walton

Blatant attempts to attack a constitutionally guaranteed right and a law-abiding industry. ~ Rob Bishop

The shot from Laws was precise but wide. ~ Alan Parry

Q. Which is my favorite country?
A. The United States of America. Not because I'm chauvinistic or xenophobic, but because I believe that we alone have it all, even if not to perfection. The U.S. has the widest possible diversity of spectacular scenery and depth of natural resources; relatively clean air and water; a fascinatingly heterogeneous population living in relative harmony; safe streets; few deadly communicable diseases; a functioning democracy; a superlative Constitution; equal opportunity in most spheres of life; an increasing tolerance of different races, religions, and sexual preferences; equal justice under the law; a free and vibrant press; a world-class culture in books,films, theater, museums, dance, and popular music; the cuisines of every nation; an increasing attention to health and good diet; an abiding entrepreneurial spirit; and peace at home. ~ Albert Podell

The first law I passed in my cabinet was a law eliminating the double salary for the prime minister and the ministers. I have a salary as member of parliament. I don't want a double salary. So it was a very important decision. ~ Enrico Letta

Cross-examination is beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth ... Cross-examination, not trial by jury, is the great and permanent contribution of the Anglo-American system of law to improved methods of trial-procedure. ~ John Henry Wigmore

Parkinson's Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It ~ Timothy Ferriss

There's no law against admiring a best friend's sister. ~ Coleen Kwan

You could change the quorum law if you wanted, you sanctimonious bitch! ~ Richelle Mead

Abortion is not allowed
because apparently it is against the law of god.
Yes, that butter-wouldn't-melt deity
who ordered babies to be slaughtered,
killed all the first-born in Egypt
And caused an entire human race to drown.

From: "Gesels van een imaginaire god"
(Scourges of an imaginary god) ~ A.J. Beirens

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law. ~ Voltaire

Conscience has nothing to do as lawgiver or judge; but is a witness against me if I do wrong, and which approves if I do right. To act against conscience is to act against reason and God's Law. ~ Artur Phleps

We don't want to merely obey God: we need to catch His heart. It is then we will glimpse the wisdom behind His directives, and not just see them as laws. ~ John Bevere

Reporters called down every other profession - medicine, law, politics - for failing to meet a level of professional responsibility which they would allow no one to enforce on themselves, and which they themselves would too rarely enforce on their own. Do as I say, not as I do was something you couldn't say to a six-year-old, but it had become a ready cant for grown-ups. And if it got any worse, then what? ~ Tom Clancy

It was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America – an idea about the way people should govern themselves. Some people make the mistake of calling that idea 'democracy' and imagining that any country can adopt it merely by holding elections. In reality, democracy was the capstone of an edifice that had as its foundation the rule of law – to be precise, the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government. ~ Niall Ferguson

The justice of any single commandment cannot be proven logically in an irrefutable manner, and there is no moral law which is binding under all conditions without exception. Ethics, generally, exist only as far as we are willing to accept them.
(from 'The Specter of Alexander Wolf') ~ Gaito Gazdanov

Feeling is the secret. ~ Neville Goddard

We'd be safer with musket in a safe town than with an assault rifle in a "without rule of law" world. That may not be sexy, but it's the truth. ~ Michael Mabee

I don't think political correctness doesn't make any difference. Once that's in your DNA, you don't pass an ordinance or pass a law or all of the sudden change your DNA. ~ Kyle Petty

The law is clear, but the situation has to do with the enforcement. Laws are used when the good people want something done for themselves. ~ David J. Kirk

He walked away. It was a shame really, but what could I do? He was the law; I broke the law, two things one should never combine.
From WIP The Trinity Saints ~ Leslie Dawn Nash

The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery. ~ Louis Antoine De Saint-Just

[ To break the law] would still be an imperative. I guess we do it for both reasons. You try to be a Christian, you try to come from that tradition of the Jewish prophets and then Christ and everything since. That becomes your handbook. "Witness" is the key word. You witness against the injustice, against the atrocity, against the heavy-handedness, and all the rest. We try to make a statement to other people, and we try to say it's your responsibility, too. ~ Philip Berrigan

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question
such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?
not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. ~ C.P. Snow

From a mathematical point of view, however, trust is hard to quantify. That's a challenge for people building models. Sadly, it's far easier to keep counting arrests, to build models that assume we're birds of a feather and treat us as such. Innocent people surrounded by criminals get treated badly, and criminals surrounded by law-abiding public get a pass. And because of the strong correlation between poverty and reported crime, the poor continue to get caught up in the digital dragnets. The rest of us barely have to think about them. ~ Cathy O'Neil

There are general laws current in the world as to morality. 'Thou shalt not steal,' for instance. That has "necessarily been current as a law through all nations. But the first man you meet in the street will have ideas about theft so different from yours, that, if you knew them as you know your own, you would say that this law and yours were not even founded on the same principle. ~ Anthony Trollope

The wind cannot overturn a mountain. Temptation cannot touch the man Who is awake, strong and humble, Who masters hiself and minds the law. ~ Gautama Buddha

Women becoming, consequently, weakerthan they ought to behave not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affectioneither destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Common sense often makes good law. ~ William O. Douglas

The historic transition from Novice to Proficient to Adept was said to be accomplished virtually overnight by the progression from marijuana to peyote to lysergic acid. Instant mysticism had arrived. Before the court of law, hippies demanded freedom for LSD the way early Christians demanded freedom for the Eucharist. ~ William Everson

Praying is begging for an unseen deity to alter the laws of nature for someone admittedly unworthy. ~ George Carlin

The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. Let us speak of the first. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Ironically, even as Khomeini empowered some women, he also found ways of oppressing their entire gender. The regime replaced the shah's secular law with an Islamic law, which allowed men to marry up to four wives, to divorce them whenever the husbands wished, and to retain custody of children. The law put the value of a woman's life at half of that of a man's life, and the value of her testimony at half that of a man's testimony.
Thus women in Iran became watchdogs and scapegoats, both the foot soldiers of the new regime and its victims. Newly empowered, they were also newly oppressed. Theirs was a paradoxical plight - and at the time, no one could have foreseen how it would one day make women a force of enormous change in Iran. ~ Nazila Fathi

The negative patterns that form as a result of this self defeating behaviour actually symbolize the negative belief that we nurture. ~ Stephen Richards

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land. ~ James Madison

I don't even talk about whether or not racial profiling is legal. I just don't think racial profiling is a particularly good law enforcement tool. ~ Eric Holder

The liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the public, and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England. ~ John Adams

You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach