Natural Law Quotes

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response.
To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.”
― Larken Rose

“The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or…ideologies…all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis - incommensurable with the others - and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“No, free will is not an 'extra'; it is part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness. A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.”
― Raymond Smullyan, The Tao Is Silent

“HUMANS THINK THAT NATURE GIVES SERVICE TO HIM SO IT IS SERVANT OF HIS, BUT HE DOES'NT UNDERSTAND THAT WE ARE CHILDREN'S OF NATURE.”
― Omkar Patil

“It is a violation of the laws of nature to swing your sword at those shackled by tyranny. Swing it at the shackles or swing it at the tyrant. Leave the innocents be.”
― J. W. Barlament

“Perception is nine-tenths of the natural law.”
― Stewart Stafford

“However appealing it may be in theory, the benevolent design of Nature rarely works out in practice, requiring intellectual acrobatics on the part of those who invoke it. [Adam] Smith recognizes that a healthy economic circulatory system depends on some government interference. Complete freedom leads to monopolies, giving manufacturers outsize power over prices and politicians, which works to the detriment of the body politic. How to account for monopolies while maintaining an ideal of naturalness? Just call them unnatural. Monopolists, writes Smith, are guilty of selling their commodities "much above the natural price." To regulate them is to force them into accordance with nature—even though monopolies themselves naturally emerge in unregulated economies.”
― Alan Levinovitz, Natural: How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science

“We never really get away with anything.”
― Ajahn Chah, A Still Forest Pool: The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah

“What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“The Nature of this realm is not Peace - it's Balance.”
― Affinity Soul

“[W]e must have the courage to break with traditional law, establish ourselves in our own way of life. We must do so harmoniously, cooperatively, and courageously. We must do so with the full conviction that those who are selfish, those who are ignorant— and they are not necessarily uneducated, but those profoundly ignorant—will be unhappy about the whole thing.”
― Manly P. Hall

“The first obligation is to Truth, and that a Truth derived from an apprehension of an order more than natural or material. I think that man who will not acknowledge the Author of their being have no sanction for truth Dedication to an abiding Truth and to the spiritual aspirations of humanity excised, the pursuit of power and the gratification of concupiscence are the logical occupations of rational men in a world that is merely human and merely natural.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“Rights have become what the political sovereign or ephemeral master decides to dispense and whatever gratifies the undisciplined cravings and desires of the individual.”
― Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition

“The deep question is: Why does nature embody so much symmetry? We do not know the full answer to this question.

However, we have some partial answers. Symmetry leads to economy, and nature, like human beings, seems to prefer economy.

If we think of nature as a vast ongoing experiment, constantly trying out different possibilities of design, then those designs that cost the least energy or that require the fewest different parts to come together at the right time will take precedence, just as the principle of natural selection says that organisms with the best ability to survive will dominate over time.

One physical principle that governs nature over and over is the “energy principle”: nature evolves to minimize energy.”
― Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew

“Our world, according to Dharma, is a place that is replete with inherent meaning, value, and an intelligent design underlying its physical principles and laws, as well as a transcendent purpose that, while not necessarily discernible via empirical means, nonetheless forms a very concrete spiritual basis of all empirical reality. The material, according to Dharma, finds its origin and sustaining ground in the spiritual. The measurable is grounded upon the infinite. The spiritual necessarily precedes the material. The world is here for a purpose – and that purpose is God’s purpose. The word “dharma”, in this more important philosophical sense, refers to those underlying natural principles that are inherent in the very structure of reality, ordering our world as the metaphysical
backdrop to the drama of everyday phenomenal existence, and that has their origin in the causeless will and grace of God. Dharma is Natural Law. Thus, if we needed to render the entire term Sanatana Dharma into English, we can cautiously translate it as „The Eternal Natural Way“. (p. 47)”
― Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya, Sanatana Dharma: The Eternal Natural Way

“Mad Human Disease is the very natural consequence of constantly ignoring and disobeying any of the many of Nature’s Laws.”
― Mango Wodzak, Topsy-Turvy World - Vegan Anarchy

“In the whole two years of their marriage she had never said anything similar, anything to indicate that she felt their being together was something less than a part of natural law.”
― Larry McMurtry, Terms of Endearment

“Nature is a divine art; it cannot be the artist. It is a dominical book and cannot be the scribe. It is embroidery and cannot be the embroiderer. It is a register and cannot be the accountant. It is the law and cannot be the power.”
― Master Nursi

“Asking if your cup is half-empty or half-full is an oxymoron...

Your cup is completely filled with both water, and air. Being filled by two different things makes it completely full.

The beauty of duality creates a (w)hole.”
― Laurence BL

“Every student of the history of philosophy assumes, tacitly or expressly, rightly or wrongly, that he knows what philosophy is or what a philosopher is. In attempting to transform the necessarily confused notion with which one starts one’s investigations, into a clear notion of philosophy, one is confronted sooner or later with what appears to be the most serious implication of the question “what a philosopher is,” viz., the relation of philosophy to social or political life. This relation is adumbrated by the term “Natural Law,” a term which is as indispensable as it is open to grave objections. If we follow the advice of our great medieval teachers and ask first “the philosopher” for his view, we learn from him that there are things which are “by nature just.” On the basis of Aristotle, the crucial question concerns then, not the existence of a ius naturale, but the manner of its existence: “is” it in the sense in which numbers and figures “are,” or “is” it in a different sense? The question can be reduced, to begin with, to this more common form: is the ius naturale a dictate of right reason, a set of essentially rational rules?”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“Every student of the history of philosophy assumes, tacitly or expressly, rightly or wrongly, that he knows what philosophy is or what a philosopher is. In attempting to transform the necessarily confused notion with which one starts one’s investigations, into a clear notion of philosophy, one is confronted sooner or later with what appears to be the most serious implication of the question 'what a philosopher is,' viz., the relation of philosophy to social or political life. This relation is adumbrated by the term 'Natural Law,' a term which is as indispensable as it is open to grave objections.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties.
If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, ”You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses.
Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation?
Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.”
― Leon Trotsky

“As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties.
If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, "You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses.
Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation?
Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.”
― Leon Trotsky

“If measured by the standards of natural law and justice, all politicians, of all parties and virtually without any exception, are guilty, whether directly or indirectly, of murder, homicide, trespass, invasion, expropriation, theft, fraud, and the fencing of stolen goods on a massive and ongoing scale. And every new generation of politicians and parties appears to be worse, and piles even more atrocities and perversions on top of the already existing mountain, so that one feels almost nostalgic about the past.
They all should be hung, or put in jail to rot, or set to making compensation.”
― Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Getting Libertarianism Right

“Those who seek the good have a permanent advantage in the ultimately inescapable human moral design. They have a greater advantage in the indestructibility of that part of the design called deep conscience, which, like a signal buoy, keeps rising. And they have an illimitable advantage in the Designer Himself, who is not a remote intelligence but a God who hears their prayers, cannot be defeated or caught by surprise, and acts beyond apparent defeats in ways they do not see.

Perhaps their greatest permanent disadvantage is that through the sheer horror of devastation, their opponents can tempt them to despair. This is a burden. But they have a permanent advantage in the virtue Saint Paul calls hope, for their confidence, unlike the bravado of their opponents, is not presumption; it does not rest in their own small strength, but in the strength of the one whom they serve.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“As there is something in our design like Furies to drive us down, so there is something in our design like Angels to help us up. If it were not so, we could not even be told about it. Yet we can. The indestructibility of our longing for lightness, for purity, for music is like a small star of hope in a darkened sky, an inkling of the Star that rules the day.”
― J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

“In this blind rage, they throw their fists at Christianity and hit Common Sense, then Common Sense enters the fight.”
― Criss Jami

“The things we pray for, good lord, give us the grace to labor for.”
― St. Thomas More