Cesare Beccaria

“Our knowledge and all of our ideas are mutually connected; the more complicated they are, the more numerous must be the roads that lead to them and depart from them.”

“It is impossible to anticipate all of the misdeeds engendered by the universal conflict of human passions. They multiply at a compound rate with the growth in population and the interlacing of particular interests that cannot be directed with geometrical precision towards the public utility.”

“In every human society, there is an effort continually tending to confer on one part the height of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws is to oppose this effort and to diffuse their influence universally and equally.”

“The moral and political principles that govern men are derived from three sources: revelation, natural law, and the artificial conventions of society. With regard to its main purpose, there is no comparison between the first and the others; but all three are alike in that they all lead towards happi...”

“Happy are those few nations that have not waited till the slow succession of human vicissitudes should, from the extremity of evil, produce a transition to good; but by prudent laws have facilitated the progress from one to the other!”

“The laws only can determine the punishment of crimes, and the authority of making penal laws can only reside with the legislator, who represents the whole society united by the social compact.”