27 Quotes by William Ernest Hocking

Nothing is more evident, I venture to think, as a result of two or three thousand years of social philosophizing, than that society must live and thrive by way of the native impulses of individual human beings.

Principle III:;: Presumptive rights are the conditions under which individual powers normally develop.

Principle II:;: The presumptions of the law are creative presumptions:;: they are aimed at conditions to be brought about, and only for that reason ignore conditions which exist.

Principle I:;: Legal rights are presumptive rights.

Art is life, plus caprice.

Mr. Rihani, we met once a thousand years ago and we may not meet again for another thousand years.

Wherever moral ambition exists, there right exists. And moral ambition itself must be presumed present in subconsciousness, even when the conscious self seems to reject it, so long as society has resources for bringing it into action; in much the same way that the life-saver presumes life to exist in the drowned man until he has exhausted his resources for recovering respiration.

It is right, or absolute right, that an individual should develop the powers that are in him. He may be said to have a “natural right” to become what he is capable of becoming. This is his only natural right.

Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished.