Cesare Beccaria Quotes
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False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
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Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment
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The fault no child ever loses is the one he was most punished for.
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The laws that forbid the carrying of arms... serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
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For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes.
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It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.
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Laws against the possession of weapons only disarm those who have no intention of committing a crime.
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The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful.
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Happy is the nation without a history.
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The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity...will respect the less important and arbitrary ones... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
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For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must be the general law; the minor, the action that conforms or does not conform to the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment. If the judge were constrained, or if he desired to frame even a single additional syllogism, the door would thereby be opened to uncertainty.