Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

When I was a kid, I thought movies just came from air. I thought they just appeared.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

Anyone who’s looked into a newborn’s innocent eyes should realize how incredible it is to be blessed with a new life.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Conscience is a man’s compass.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

If you want to deal with an epidemic – crime or health – the smartest and most effective and cheapest way to deal with it is prevention first.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

Writers are always writing about infidelity. It’s so dramatic. The wickedness of it, the secrecy, the complications, the finding that you thought you were one person but you’re also this other person. The innocent life and the guilty life. My God, it’s just full of stuff for a writer. I doubt it will ever go out of fashion.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.