Political Quotes

On the record
All these obstacles to instantaneous readiness may exist together, and yet the inexorable mandate of the law scorns his appeal for that delay on which his highest interests are suspended, and dooms him to bondage because he cannot achieve impossibilities.
Said by
Horace Mann
Free Soil · Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Mann describes the overwhelming obstacles that individuals face in legal proceedings, which can lead to unjust outcomes.

Share

More from Horace Mann

This is the reciprocity of slave law.--to be forever liable to be proved guilty, but never able to prove himself innocent; to be subject to all punishments, but, through his own oath, to no protection.

gutenberg.org

The aged and the infant she left for the vultures; but the strong men and the strong women she drove, scourged and bleeding, to the shore.

gutenberg.org

But the impious hand of man divorces these twin capacities, wherever it denies knowledge.

gutenberg.org

Packed and stowed like merchandise between unventilated decks, so close that the tempest without could not ruffle the pestilential air within, the voyage was begun.

gutenberg.org

Other voices in this conversation