Quote#Politics & Power
I must say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: For we ought not to…
Quote byThomas More · 1478–1535
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Utopia (1516), Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth.
English (original)
I must say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: For we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion.
— Thomas More
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