It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. Cesare Beccaria More Quotes by Cesare Beccaria More Quotes From Cesare Beccaria Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment Cesare Beccaria punishment crime certainty The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are Cesare Beccaria gun law men 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 intensity crime men Laws against the possession of weapons only disarm those who have no intention of committing a crime. Cesare Beccaria crime weapons law The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful. Cesare Beccaria punishment judging war 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. Cesare Beccaria sacrifice real men The fault no child ever loses is the one he was most punished for. Cesare Beccaria childhood faults children Happy is the nation without a history. Cesare Beccaria rehabilitation nations 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. Cesare Beccaria law may men 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. Cesare Beccaria punishment law doors 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. Cesare Beccaria good society power happiness For every criminal case, the judge must construct a perfect syllogism: the major premise must be the general law; the minor premise, whether or not the action in question is in compliance with the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment. Cesare Beccaria judge punishment law action If someone were to say that life at hard labor is as painful as death and therefore equally cruel, I should reply that, taking all the unhappy moments of perpetual slavery together, it is perhaps even more painful, but these moments are spread out over a lifetime, and capital punishment exercises all its power in an instant. Cesare Beccaria power together life death 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. Cesare Beccaria roads complicated ideas knowledge No man can be judged a criminal until he is found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection until it has been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorize the punishment of a citizen so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? Cesare Beccaria man society power long 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 happiness in this mortal life. Cesare Beccaria society happiness men life 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. Cesare Beccaria only punishment society authority Easy, simple and great laws, which await nothing but a sign from the lawgiver to spread prosperity and vigour throughout the nation, laws which would earn him immortal hymns of gratitude down the generations, are those which are least considered or least wanted. Cesare Beccaria down great gratitude simple If the same punishment is prescribed for two crimes that injure society in different degrees, then men will face no stronger deterrent from committing the greater crime if they find it in their advantage to do so. Cesare Beccaria face punishment society men The severity of punishments ought to be relative to the state of the nation itself. Stronger and more easily felt impressions have to be made on a people only just out of the savage state. A lightning strike is needed to stop a fierce lion who is provoked by a gunshot. Cesare Beccaria lion nation fierce people
