The unattributed Cecil B.DeMille quotation on a hallway wall at my daughter's high school

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.

This struck me, initially, as a bit harsh...you know, unnecessarily totalitarian. But then I remembered some of the things I had some of my disobedient high school students write out hundreds of times back in the early-to-mid 80s:

Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you.
(A proverb flashed on the screen at the end of the 1978 film King of the Gypsies)

and

When I fight authority, authority always wins
(refrain of "The Authority Song" from John Mellencamp's 1983 release Uh-Huh)

not to mention

my scrawling the Vergilian descensus Averno facile ("the descent to Hades is easy," Aeneid 6.126) atop failing Latin tests and quizzes...

High schoolers, they're tough!