Sam Harris Quotes

There exist no provisions in our law that perfectly and precisely describe the form of criminality that shall be judged here.

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.

I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality.

But this will not do, God will certainly punish you for stealing and for being unfaithful.

All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.

When news of the crash came, probably a lot of people in small towns and farms across America felt a sense of grim satisfaction that the sinners had finally been punished for their wicked ways.

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

Every person who is tempted to go astray does not deserve punishment

If we started prosecuting people for sin, we’d all be in jail.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When somebody up there—a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator—so decrees.

If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

No law made after a fact done, can make it a crime.

What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin …

Lock up the fornicators!

The criminal law tries to define moral standards.

… degrees of crookedness are usually measured only by opportunity. I have always had a feeling that society ought to look with more disfavor on the man who profits from other people's crimes than on the criminals themselves.

The most High approveth not the gifts of the wicked.

We have judicial system in Sudan. Anyone who committed a war crime, anti-human crime, or any other crime will be locked up.

Individual bankers are rightly being investigated by the police. I and all colleagues in the chamber hope that if criminality is proven, they will go to jail and bear the same brunt of punishment as any other criminal.

The gap between being a bad person and being a criminal is often wide.

[Criminal law] expresses progressivism’s incontinent itch to boss people around, and a nasty thirst to punish deviations from ever-more-minute strictures promulgated by experts whose expertise supposedly encompasses how everyone else should live.

You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.

He who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.

For one crime which is expiated in prison ten thousand are committed thoughtlessly by those who condemn.

People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all.