Twelve Tables Quotes & Sayings

The concept that flourished during the most glorious periods of republican Rome and that appeared in the Twelve Tables of the Law as one of the first, though as yet imperfect, affirmations of the rights of man, inspired the struggle between patricians and plebeians. — Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

Mr. Prince, would you like to know the most significant event in the history of freedom?"
"The American Revolution?"
"A defensible choice, a close second even, but not mine. I would choose the moment when the Roman plebians required the patricians to write down the twelve tables of the law and put them where everyone could see them
thereby proclaimed the law supreme over the politicians. The rule of law is the essence of freedom. — Jerry Pournelle

Thirteen at a table is unlucky only,
when the hostess has only twelve chops. — Groucho Marx

The Law of the Twelve Tables, a Roman legislation circa 450 BC, actually required a father to put to death any deformed child (Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto). (Modern moral philosophers, like Joseph Fletcher and Princeton University's Peter Singer, advocate the same thing.) — Robert J. Hutchinson

Judges ought above all to remember the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables :The supreme law of all is the weal [weatlh/ well-being] of the people. — Francis Bacon