No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Interpretation
Unwritten traditions and societal norms often hold more power than formal laws.
This quote highlights the idea that the expectations and customs of a society can be more influential and authoritative than any legal statutes. While laws are codified rules meant to govern behavior, it is the unwritten rules, shaped by culture and public sentiment, that frequently dictate actions and interactions within a community.
In practice
During a discussion on social behaviors in a community meeting.
Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in government.
Parliaments have stopped laughing at woman suffrage, and politicians have begun to dodge! It is the inevitable premonition of coming victory.
Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex.
The answer to one is the answer to all. Government by 'the people' is expedient or it is not. If it is expedient, then obviously all the people must be included.
Just as the world war is no white man's war, but every man's war, so is the struggle for woman suffrage no white woman's struggle, but every woman's struggle.
There is no problem of human nature which is insoluble.
There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.
I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.
I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me. You can't possibly speak for a diverse group of people. I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy.
There is little difference between the Zulu warrior who smeared bis body with lion's fat and the modern woman who dabs hers with expensive perfume. The one was trying to acquire the courage of the king of beasts, the other is attempting to acquire the irresistible sexuality of flowers. The underlying principle is the same.
Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
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