“When a fixed code of laws, which must be observed to the letter, leaves no further care to the judge than to examine the acts of citizens and to decide whether or not they conform to the law as written;… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
“It is a considerable point in all good legislation to determine exactly the credibility of witnesses and the proofs of a crime. Every reasonable man, everyone, that is, whose ideas have a certain interconnection and whose feelings accord with those… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms... serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
“ If every individual be bound to society, society is equally bound to him, by a contract which from its nature equally binds both parties. This obligation, which descends from the throne to the cottage, and equally binds the highest and lowest of mankind, signifies nothing more than that it is the interest of all, that conventions, which are useful to… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share
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… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share
The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful. — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
“ Every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity, says the great Montesquieu, is tyrannical. A proposition which may be made more general thus:… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
The fault no child ever loses is the one he was most punished for. — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes. — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
Laws against the possession of weapons only disarm those who have no intention of committing a crime. — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
“When a fixed code of laws, which must be observed to the letter, leaves no further care to the judge than to examine the… — Cesare Beccaria Copy Share Image
