{"author":"Cesare Beccaria","author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria","total_quotes":14,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["ideas","roads","lead "],"id":27062,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"Philosophers see no harm in the Jesuits other than in their effect on humanity and the sciences. The vulgar and especially the prejudiced only hate them from an envy and jealousy born out of conspiracy and intrigue at an organisation which overshadows them.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["hate","humanity","conspiracy "],"id":29902,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"Happy is the nation without a history.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["historical-fiction"],"id":83157,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"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.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["good","power","society "],"id":104918,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"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.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["crimes-and-punishments","judge","justice","law","trials"],"id":196573,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"I myself owe everything to French books. They developed in my soul the sentiments of humanity which had been stifled by eight years of fanatical and servile education.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["myself","soul","humanity "],"id":284257,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"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.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["life","power","together "],"id":302442,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"Laws are the terms by which independent and isolated men united to form a society, once they tired of living in a perpetual state of war where the enjoyment of liberty was rendered useless by the uncertainty of its preservation. They sacrificed a portion of this liberty so that they could enjoy the remainder in security and peace.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["peace","society","men "],"id":324325,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"By 'justice', I understand nothing more than that bond which is necessary to keep the interest of individuals united, without which men would return to their original state of barbarity. All punishments which exceed the necessity of preserving this bond are, in their nature, unjust.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["justice","men","bond "],"id":328764,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"},{"text":"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.","author":"Cesare Beccaria","tags":["life","law","society "],"id":357067,"author_id":"Cesare+Beccaria"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":14,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}