Henry James Sumner Maine Quotes
"In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: History, Home, Truth, Europe, World)
"It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge; and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Legal, Success, Knowledge, Events, Law, Popular, Possession, World)
"Law is stable; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Happiness, People, Law)
"Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Trust, Doubt, Tyranny)
"The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Art, Discovery, Writing)
"The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Class, Nation, World)
"The epoch of Customary Law, and of its custody by a privileged order, is a very remarkable one."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Law, Order, Remarkable)
"The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Truth, Observation)
"The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: World)
"The Roman Code was merely an enunciation in words of the existing customs of the Roman people."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: People, Words)
"The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any set of human institutions."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: History)
"When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code, there is an end to what may be called its spontaneous development."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Development, End, Law, May)
"The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction."
- Henry James Sumner Maine
(Related: Society, Correction, Duty, Religious)