#customs

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror. ↗

— Peter Kropotkin

#beneficial #could #customs #enforced #even

I'm only stopped by people in uniform, whether it's customs people, janitors, or the FBI - they all watch 'The Wire.' Sadly, beautiful, glamorous women don't know anything about it. ↗

— Dominic West

#anything #beautiful #customs #fbi #glamorous

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm. ↗

— Henry Miller

#beliefs #customs #doctrines #ethics #import

Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future. ↗

— Alberto Moravia

#based #becomes #custodian #customs #each

Now it is evident that a little insight into the customs of every people is necessary to insure a kindly communication; this, joined with patience and kindness, will seldom fail with the natives of the interior. ↗

— Charles Sturt

#customs #every #evident #fail #insight

Why do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them." "They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#customs #obedience #travel #truth-telling #home

Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#habit #nature

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds. ↗

— Charles Caleb Colton

#bodies #change #climate #customs #empty

Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#customs #life #life

I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. ↗

— Daniel Defoe

#barbarous #christian #civilized #considering #country