Word: precept
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...action of the Commission finds no support in right, principle or in law. It is wholly unreasonable and arbitrary. It violates the cardinal precept upon which the constitutional safeguards of personal liberty ultimately rest-that this shall be a government of laws. . . . Arbitrary power and the rule of the Constitution cannot both exist. They are antagonistic and incompatible forces; and one or the other must of necessity perish whenever they are brought into conflict...
...dictatorship,'' think it a misnomer for the Party's "inspiration, evocation and formulation of a General Will'' among Russia's millions. The Party is outside the constitution; it broods over the body politic like the spirit over the waters. Its aim is, by precept and example, to leaven Russia's lump. To this end, half its membership is kept ''at the bench or in the mine;" the other half act as overseers to Russia's babeling pyramid of committees...
Luckily he had Charles on his side. When the Lord High Admiral resigned, no successor was appointed, and Pepys became Secretary. He made the fur fly. He put down "corruption, laissez-faire and boozy optimism" with a stern official hand. Says Biographer Bryant: "By his precept and example Pepys was to transform an inchoate and ill-directed service into the most enduring, exact and potent instrument of force seen on this disorderly planet since the days of Imperial Rome...
...would be of interest to ascertain just how many modern medical schools depend upon the actual administering of this oath in place of teaching ideals by precept...
...Sklar's Communist melodrama Stevedore (TIME, April 20, 1934). In that locale, Parade's sour skits and migraine melodies might have had some relevancy. At the Theatre Guild, which has a tradition for art rather than garment-loft politics, Parade gives its spectators no pleasure, no precept, but plenty of punishment. Its successive theatrical floats savor unhappily of Union Square, seem as homemade and impotently angry as the bedraggled banners of striking bushelmen...