Dictum in the context of Latin

The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am", is the "first principle" of René Descartes' philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. It later appeared in Latin in his Principles of Philosophy, and a similar phrase (Ego sum, ego existo, 'I am, I exist') also featured prominently in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The dictum is also sometimes referred to as the cogito. As Descartes explained in a margin note, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." In the posthumously published The Search for Truth by Natural Light, he expressed this insight as dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I am—or what is the same—I think, therefore I am."). Antoine Léonard Thomas, in a 1765 essay in honor of Descartes, presented it as dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.").

Descartes's statement became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to provide a certain foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought.

The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms. It was ratified on December 15, 1791, along with nine other articles of the United States Bill of Rights. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court affirmed that the right belongs to individuals, for self-defense in the home, while also including, as dicta, that the right is not unlimited and does not preclude the existence of certain long-standing prohibitions such as those forbidding "the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill" or restrictions on "the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons". In McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) the Supreme Court ruled that state and local governments are limited to the same extent as the federal government from infringing upon this right. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022) assured the right to carry weapons in public spaces with reasonable exceptions.

The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms in English common law and was influenced by the English Bill of Rights 1689. Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression, and the civic duty to act in concert in defense of the state. While both James Monroe and John Adams supported the Constitution being ratified, its most influential framer was James Madison. In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by the militia, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] militia." He argued that State governments "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms", and assured that "the existence of subordinate governments ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition".

Creatio ex nihilo (Latin, 'creation out of nothing') or nihilogony is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act. It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe came to exist. It is in contrast to Creatio ex materia and Foundationalism (creation from matter resulting from logical aseity, also known as Resultante ex Aseitate Logica, but modern foundationalism is cosmological with improvements from the 17th century viewpoint that are sometimes framed in terms of the dictum ex nihilo nihil fit or 'nothing comes from nothing', meaning all things were formed ex materia—that is, from pre-existing things).

"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular analogy for speech or actions whose principal purpose is to create panic, and in particular for speech or actions which may for that reason be thought to be outside the scope of free speech protections. The phrase is a paraphrasing of a dictum, or non-binding statement, from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919, which held that the defendant's speech in opposition to the draft during World War I was not protected free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The case was later partially overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. an immediate riot).

The paraphrasing differs from Holmes's original wording in that it typically does not include the word falsely, while also adding the word crowded to describe the theatre.