Justice & Law Quote by John Morley

Morley’s line lands like a polite Victorian epigram with a blade inside it: when reverence is compulsory, curiosity becomes contraband. The “sun” is doing double duty here. On the surface it’s a harmless symbol of shared piety and civic cohesion. Underneath, it’s any sacred institution that demands public loyalty - church, crown, party, even the nation itself. Once that loyalty is framed as “duty,” dissent isn’t merely wrong; it’s immoral. Morley sharpens the point by making the forbidden act not blasphemy but analysis: “examine the laws of heat.” He’s talking about method, not ideology. The crime is insisting that claims about the world submit to evidence.

As a statesman in a 19th-century liberal tradition, Morley is speaking from the long trench war between authority and inquiry: the battles over Darwin, biblical criticism, and the expanding idea that government should tolerate - even protect - uncomfortable speech. The quote works because it refuses to argue theology on theology’s turf. It shifts the conversation to epistemology and power. If a regime needs worship to function, it will treat explanation as sabotage. The very act of asking “how does it work?” punctures the aura that keeps obedience frictionless.

The subtext feels contemporary: whenever politics turns into liturgy, policy questions become heresy hunts. Morley’s warning isn’t that faith is silly; it’s that enforced faith is fragile, and fragility breeds censorship.