Cesare Beccaria

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment

— Cesare Beccaria

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms... serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be…

— Cesare Beccaria

“  If every individual be bound to society, society is equally bound to him, by a contract which from its nature equally binds…

— Cesare Beccaria

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be…

— Cesare Beccaria

The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful.

— Cesare Beccaria

Happy is the nation without a history.

— Cesare Beccaria

“  Every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity, says the great Montesquieu, is tyrannical. A proposition which may be made more…

— Cesare Beccaria

The fault no child ever loses is the one he was most punished for.

— Cesare Beccaria

For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing…

— Cesare Beccaria

Laws against the possession of weapons only disarm those who have no intention of committing a crime.

— Cesare Beccaria

“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire…

— Cesare Beccaria

“When a fixed code of laws, which must be observed to the letter, leaves no further care to the judge than to…

— Cesare Beccaria

“It is a considerable point in all good legislation to determine exactly the credibility of witnesses and the proofs of a crime.…

— Cesare Beccaria

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.

— Cesare Beccaria

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire…

— Cesare Beccaria

For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must…

— Cesare Beccaria

“The murder that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood, remorselessly.”

— Cesare Beccaria