Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum. ~John Kenneth Galbraith

His speeches to an hour-glass
Do some resemblance show
Because the longer time they run
The shallower they grow.
~Author Unknown

If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law. ~Lysander Spooner, Trial by Jury

Why doesn’t the fellow who says, “I’m no speechmaker,” let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration? ~Kin Hubbard

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated

The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try.
~William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime. ~Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism