Cesare Beccaria

"Mercy in the law is not weakness; it is the strength to resist the natural human impulse for revenge."

"The accused has the right to know his accuser, the charges against him, and the evidence offered against him."

"A law that is unjust to one group is an unjust law, regardless of how many it benefits."

"The purpose of government is to protect the innocent, not to protect the guilty from punishment."

"Capital punishment, far from deterring crime, often serves only to glorify the criminal in the eyes of the masses."

"Those who make laws should be bound by the same laws they impose on others."

"The right to be tried by a jury of one's peers is the last bulwark against judicial tyranny."

"Laws written in haste and amended in anger are rarely just or effective."

"The man who obeys the law from fear alone is no law-abiding citizen, but a coerced subject."

"Superstition and ignorance are the greatest obstacles to justice and human progress."

"A judge who does not understand the nature of human weakness is unfit to judge mankind."

"The certainty of punishment at sunrise is more terrifying than the uncertainty of punishment at midnight."

"Laws should be permanent and stable, not subject to the whims of despots or the passions of the crowd."

"To punish a man for a crime he may not have committed is to commit a greater crime still."

"The legislator who ignores the consequences of his laws is a carpenter building in the dark."

"A society that punishes poverty is a society that ensures perpetual poverty and crime."

"Freedom of thought is meaningless without freedom of speech and freedom to act on that speech."

"The man who fears the rack more than death is a man already dead in spirit."

"Laws exist to serve man, not man to serve laws."

"The judge who is corrupted by fear or favor is a poison in the body politic."

"To educate a child is to prevent a crime before it is committed."

"The written law, accessible to all, is infinitely superior to the arbitrary will of magistrates."

"A punishment that is disproportionate to the crime is itself a crime against justice."

"The innocent man imprisoned is twice a victim: first of the crime he did not commit, then of the system that condemned him."

"Legislation is the art of determining what is best for society, not what is easiest for the legislator."

"The man who cannot be tried in open court, with witnesses he can cross-examine, is not truly a man but a slave."

"A nation that practices torture practices the death of its own soul."

"The law's severity should be tempered by mercy, its rigidity by compassion, its certainty by doubt."

"Those who design punishments must first understand the psychology of those they are punishing."

"The greatest monument to a legislator is not his laws, but the liberty and security of the people living under them."