Terry Pratchett Quotes

Believing a person deserves a defence is not the same as doing anything in your power to get him off scot-free.

The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power.

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted.

If pimps and thieves everywhere were always punished, honest people would all believe themselves always to be innocent.

Whether a man is guilty or innocent, we have to find that out by due process of law.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

You can't trust anybody with power.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.

When I was initially charged I still thought I was not guilty because I had followed the rules.

Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

There are reasons to doubt that our criminal justice system is fundamentally just.

He that buys the office of magistrate must of necessity sell justice.

Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

No Man ought to be looked upon as guilty, before he has received his judicial Sentence; nor can the Laws deprive him of their Protection, before it is proved that he has forfeited all Right to it.

… J. Edgar Hoover, whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with a silencer on its rattle.