"The law: it has honored us; may we honor it"
About this Quote
A single, balanced sentence that quietly tries to weld personal pride to institutional obedience. Webster’s line flatters the audience first - “it has honored us” - casting citizenship not as a burden but as a status conferred by the legal order. That opening is more than politeness; it’s a strategic inversion. People usually talk about honoring the law because it protects them. Webster insists the law has already done the honoring, which implies a debt. If you’ve been dignified by belonging to a lawful republic, then breaking faith with its rules isn’t mere misconduct; it’s ingratitude.
The construction does the heavy lifting. The colon snaps the phrase into a civic maxim, like something meant to be recited and remembered. Then the symmetry (“honored us / honor it”) creates a moral loop: legitimacy flows from law to people and must flow back from people to law. It’s reciprocity packaged as obligation, the kind of rhetoric designed to make compliance feel like self-respect rather than submission.
Context matters: Webster spoke in an era when the American project was less a settled nation than an argument conducted at scale - over federal power, sectional conflict, and the legitimacy of dissent. As a statesman who prized Union and constitutional authority, he isn’t praising “law” in the abstract; he’s defending the idea that democratic freedom survives only if it binds itself. The subtext is a warning aimed at factions tempted to treat rules as optional when politics turns hot: the law isn’t just a tool you use. It’s the framework that makes “us” worth honoring in the first place.
The construction does the heavy lifting. The colon snaps the phrase into a civic maxim, like something meant to be recited and remembered. Then the symmetry (“honored us / honor it”) creates a moral loop: legitimacy flows from law to people and must flow back from people to law. It’s reciprocity packaged as obligation, the kind of rhetoric designed to make compliance feel like self-respect rather than submission.
Context matters: Webster spoke in an era when the American project was less a settled nation than an argument conducted at scale - over federal power, sectional conflict, and the legitimacy of dissent. As a statesman who prized Union and constitutional authority, he isn’t praising “law” in the abstract; he’s defending the idea that democratic freedom survives only if it binds itself. The subtext is a warning aimed at factions tempted to treat rules as optional when politics turns hot: the law isn’t just a tool you use. It’s the framework that makes “us” worth honoring in the first place.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|
More Quotes by Daniel
Add to List
