Connexions Quotations

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Law and Crime
Quotes


The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
- Fydor Dostoevsky

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.
- Noam Chomsky

The existing penal system, which is permeated through and through with the brutal class spirit and barbarism of capitalism, must be extirpated root and branch. - Rosa Luxemburg

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

The law, in all its magnificent equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, or the steal bread.
- Anatole France

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don’t understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.
- Bertolt Brecht

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
- Vito Corleone [Mario Puzo], in The Godfather

“No, I won’t.”
Bertrand Russell's reply to the magistrate who asked him whether he would pledge himself to "good behaviour" in the future, after Russell had been arrested at an anti-nuclear sit-in in September 1961. As a result of his refusal, Russell, 89 years old at the time, was sent to jail.

A philosopher produces ideas, a poet poems, a clergyman sermons, a professor compendia and so on. A criminal produces crimes. If we take a closer look at the connection between this latter branch of production and society as a whole, we shall rid ourselves of many prejudices. The criminal produces not only crimes but also criminal law, and with this also the professor who gives lectures on criminal law and in addition to this the inevitable compendium in which this same professor throws his lectures onto the general market as “commodities”.
- Karl Marx
- Karl Marx
  Theories of Surplus Value

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
- H.D. Thoreau

The worst violators of nature and human rights never go to jail. They hold the keys.
- Eduardo Galeano

Authors — Topics — First Letter: A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  K  L  M N O P R S T U V  W Y


To learn more about Law and Crime, explore the Connexions Subject Index Crime page and the Law page.