William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield Quotes

The air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe, and so everyone who breathes it becomes free. Everyone who comes to this island is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may have suffered and whatever may be the colour of his skin.

Decide promptly, but never give any reasons for your decisions. Your decisions may be right, but your reasons are sure to be wrong.

Consider what you think justice requires, and decide accordingly. But never give your reasons; for your judgment will probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong.

True liberty can exist only when justice is equally administered to all

I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity a deluded population can swallow.

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

An estimated value is a precarious measure of justice, compared with the specific thing.

Uncertain justice by a verdict is much better than certain injustice.

True popularity is not the popularity which is followed after, but the popularity which follows after.

It is iniquitous, unjust, and most impolitic to persecute for religion's sake. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

Rules of property ought to be generally known, and not to be left upon loose notes, which rather serve to confound principles, than to confirm them.

Humanism or atheism is a wonderful philosophy of life as long as you are big, strong, and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. But watch out if you are in a lifeboat and there are others who are younger, bigger, or smarter.

A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.

There is no entering into the secret thoughts of a man's heart.

I wish popularity, but it is that popularity which follows; not that which is run after. It is that popularity which, sooner or later, never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends, by noble means.

The expenses of the paperwork and court fees involved in pursuing the appeal through the courts were not too high. In fact, as I recall, removing prayer from U.S. public schools cost less than $20,000... no Christian organization filed a brief in support of our opponents.

God help the patient.

There is no positive law: Many things are bad by that, which otherwise were not.

The law protects nothing in that very respect, in which it is, at the same time, in the eye of the law, a crime.