A physician would not cure his patients more effectually if he were angry with them for being ill, and the criminal law is not more effective when it is inspired by anger against the criminal. The criminal presents a problem, psychological, educational, sociological, and economic; this difficult problem is not best handled in a state of blind rage. All arguments for corporal punishment spring from anger, not from scientific understanding. As men become more scientific, such barbaric practices will be no longer tolerated.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“On corporal punishment,” New York American (1932-09-07)
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Quotations about:
justice system
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Honest Men often go to Law for their Right; when Wise Men would sit down with the Wrong, supposing the first Loss least. In some Countries the Course of the Courts is so tedious, and the Expence so high, that the Remedy, Justice, is worse than, Injustice, the Disease. In my Travels I once saw a Sign call’d The Two Men at Law; One of them was painted on one Side, in a melancholy Posture, all in Rags, with this Scroll, I have lost my Cause. The other was drawn capering for Joy, on the other Side, with these Words, I have gain’d my Suit; but he was stark naked.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1742)
In the words of the old saying, every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
The Pursuit of Justice, “Eradicating Free Enterprise in Organized Crime” (1964)
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The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
“The Federal Prosecutor,” speech, Conference of United States Attorneys, Washington, DC (1940-04-01)
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Concluding words. Delivered while Jackson was the US Attorney General. Reprinted in the Journal of the American Judicature Society (1940-06).