Saint Augustine Quotes

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

In matters of government, justice means force as well as virtue.

Force cannot change right.

I have always been against the gangster as hero.

The executioner's face is always well hidden.

Silent enim leges inter arma (Laws are silent in times of war).

But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.

Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.

Lagos was a city that had been turned against itself. There was a bridge that became the perfect trap for crimes, which began with nails being scattered to cause flat tyres. If the driver stopped, the car would be dismantled in 20 minutes and the parts thrown overboard [to people waiting below]. The system had turned into a kind of destructive device that could be used against people. That was the narrative.

That is one of the Law's purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it.

Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their situation.

Who's the best person you know. Of all the people you know personally, is there anyone who has a sense of right and wrong and lives by it? This was a sticky question because it would have to be Ranger ...but I suspected he occasionally killed people. Only bad people, of course, but still...

The Lower City is MINE, Its People are MINE. If I Find Them That's Doing All This Kidnapping And Murdering, They'd Best Pray For Mercy, Because Once I Get My Teeth In 'Em I Will NEVER Let Them Go.

The law is an opinion with a gun.

Had courage, wisdom, and reason always prevailed in people, there would not have been oppressions and oppressors.

Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.

See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.

All violence flows from the same source ... the need for power. Power is the only true morality ... the only deathless god, and the appetite for violence is its only commandment.

For there is no virtue, the honour and credit for which procures a man more odium from the elite than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. For they only honour the valiant and admire the wise, while in addition they also love just men, and put entire trust and confidence in them.

Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is ready.

The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

I am a veteran, I fought in a war. I've been a prosecutor. I've sent people to jail for the rest of their life.

Power at its best is love implementing the demand of justice.

It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.

It's still a load. If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we'd be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities, shipping marble and steel and copper and getting paid Red Chinese for every kilo. We'd be rich and they'd be dead, if there was such a thing as the Scavenge God, or his scales. And that goes double for the Deepwater priests. They're all full of it. Nothing balances out.