We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the moral responsibility to discern and challenge unjust laws.
In this quote, Alexander Bickel stresses that simply following the law is insufficient for a just society; individuals must exercise their judgment to identify and resist bad laws. He argues that there is a moral duty to challenge laws that are unjust, as this aligns with the principles of a free society that values justice and ethical standards over blind obedience.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a debate on civil disobedience and justice.
The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of thingsstop being a glass. Become a lake.
The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook
It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.
Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller's, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.
But still, everything is for Jesus; so like that everything is beautiful, even though it is difficult.
Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
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