Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

It's perfectly obvious that somebody's responsible and somebody's innocent. Otherwise it [justice] makes no sense at all.

Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?

I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it.

Nothing of course was ever done to Bill for the killing of Tutt.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

Well, there's no one at all, they do be saying, but is deserving of some punishment from the very minute of his birth.

The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.

Censure acquits the raven, but pursues the dove.

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

One threatens the innocent who spares the guilty.

The big thieves hang the little ones.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape

Those who are innocent today may be guilty tomorrow.

No man ought to be condemned for exhorting people to pursue justice in a certain line, though he may foresee that in the pursuit of that justice the opposition given to those who are proceeding in a just course may produce collision, and that collision lead to the commission of crime; but our duty, as I conceive, is to seek for the injustice, and there to impute the crime… It is to that injustice, and not to those who pursue a just course for the attainment of a right end, that the guilt is to be ascribed.

To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.

Punishment - The justice that the guilty deal out to those that are caught.

It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die

In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.

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

To admit guilt for nonexistent crimes is unacceptable to me.

In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!

Blame is for God and small children.

A crime is a crime, regardless of what collar you wear.