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"When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them."
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"The law-abiding citizen by his labor serves both himself and his fellow man and thereby integrates himself peacefully into the social order. The robber, on the other hand, is intent, not on honest toil, but on the forcible appropriation of the fruits of others' labor."
"The world is so lawful that not even a single mosquito can touch you, as long as you do not interfere. If your interference stops, everything will stop."
"The jurist is totally unacquainted with the problem of the value of money; he knows nothing of fluctuations in its exchange-value. The naive popular belief in the stability of the value of money has been admitted, with all its obscurity, into the law, and no great historical cause of large and sudden variations in the value of money has ever provided."
"This extraordinary tale of madness, leading up to Stephen being sectioned off to the lunatic asylum at Broadmoor, also reveals Stephen's eventual fight to win his freedom from the asylum, which saw his legal team mount a successful challenge against the 'criminally insane' label that was keeping him in Broadmoor. Moyle's legal team successfully argued that he was either a criminal or insane, he could not be both."
"Legal investigation. As Clinton noted, "My goal in this deposition was to be truthful, but not particularly helpful."
"Anywhere in the world, if you see a law which is protecting the rapists, you must know that this law has been prepared by the rapists!"
"The law. Lady Frances, is an uncertain animal. It has twists and turns that surprise the non-legal mind."
"Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish, and all the writers, keenly interested in human welfare whom I know, laugh at the prohibition law."
Explore more quotes by Hilary Mantel
"Your love of glory must conquer your will to survive; or why fight at all? Why not be a smith, a brewer, a wool merchant? Why are you in the contest, if not to win, and if not to win, then to die?"
"He has never told anyone this story. He doesn't mind talking to Richard, to Rafe about his past--within reason--but he doesn't mean to give away pieces of himself."
"One summer at the fag end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I'd agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you think the time will never arrive: that there will be a nuclear holocaust, or something else diverting."
"You know I'm not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations. I cannot split myself into two, one your friend and the other the king's servant."
"If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient. [25 February 2010]"
"A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old. Your undivided church has liked nothing better than persecuting its own members, burning them and hacking them apart when they stood by their own conscience, slashing their bellies open and feeding their guts to dogs."
"You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do."
"History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him."
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