The law must be stable, but it must not stand still.
Interpretation
Laws should be consistent yet adaptable to change.
This quote by Roscoe Pound emphasizes the importance of a legal system that maintains stability while being flexible enough to evolve with societal changes. It suggests that laws should not become outdated or immobile, but rather must continuously adapt to serve justice and the needs of a dynamic society.
In practice
In a law seminar discussing the evolution of legal frameworks.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.
Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.
The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting.
No idea is so antiquitated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not some day be antiquitated . . . to seize the flying thought before it escapes us is our only touch with reality.
Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon. She did not hear him, but stood over his bed and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow. Hold my hand, he said, and then: why are your putting the sheet over my face?
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
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