William McIlvanney famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice.
-- William McIlvanney

#Thinking #Law #Justice
Writing is a way of sharing our humanity.
-- William McIlvanney

#Writing #Humanity #Way
Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.
-- William McIlvanney

#Lying #Needs
There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be seen to be bidding.
-- William McIlvanney

#Laughter #Laughing #People
That would have been a nice place, inside an idea, but it wasn't a place to live. It was necessary to live where the idea and the fact collided.
-- William McIlvanney

#Nice #Ideas #Facts
Four experts had an appointment with an ordinary man. They needed him to ratify their findings, or anything they achieved would be meaningless. As they drove to meet him, they knocked down a man on the road. He was dying. If they tried to save him, they might miss their appointment. They decided that their appointment, which concerned all of us, was more important than the life of one man. They drove on to keep their appointment. They did not know that the man they were to meet was the man they had left to die.
-- William McIlvanney

#Men #Missing #Important
Just as the apparent openness of rectitude will have its hidden places where foul things moulder in the dark, so, in the shadowed lives of those outside the law may sometimes be found concealed honesty and naive ideals.
-- William McIlvanney

#Honesty #Dark #Law

Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.
A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.
The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
Fear is born of Satan, and if we would only take time to think a moment we would see that everything Satan says is founded upon a falsehood.
The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.
Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.
The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.
Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within. Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

William McIlvanney famous quotes

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