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The law and the constitution are like a child's pants. They've got to be made wider and longer as the child grows so as to fit him. If they're kept too tight, he'll burst them; and if you're in a hurry and make them too big all at once, they'll trip him up.

— John Buchan The Path of the King (1921)

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More quotes by John Buchan

Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.

A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906)

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

Montrose and Leadership (1930)

I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.

Canadian Occasions (1940)

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

All John Buchan quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Buchan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.