A precedent embalms a principle.
Benjamin Disraeli

As federal lawmakers, we have a responsibility to set a precedent for energy efficient practices.
Greg Walden

As time goes on, I realize more and more that, beginning in the early 30's, David Smith began setting the precedent for what was to come later for many of us.
Kenneth Noland

Every bad precedent originated as a justifiable measure.
Sallust

From the early days of European migration to America, in the 17th Century, the prototype of buildings was based on English precedent, even if mostly translated into the locally available material in abundance: timber.
Harry Seidler

Google is in an amazing position to be the target of tons of lawsuits that will set precedent for many important things for us on the Internet.
Joichi Ito

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.
Thomas Paine

I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.
Clara Barton

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I shall always be consistent and never change my ways so long as I am in my senses; but for the sake of precedent the Senate should beware of binding itself to support the acts of any man, since he might through some mischance suffer a change.
Tiberius

I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.
George Washington

In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.
Brian Ferneyhough

It was a sight surpassing all precedent, and one we never dreamed of seeing.
Howard Carter

Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans.
Max Baucus

One precedent creates another and they soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was a fact, today is doctrine.
Junius

Right now, my career is in three directions: as a performer, as an arranger, as an author - and I don't give any one of them true precedent, or true top marks, as opposed to the other two.
Mel Torme

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.
Bill Kristol

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise.
Herbert Croly

This is going right to the police. So, it's a very dangerous precedent.
Floyd Abrams