Adam Cohen Quotes

The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.

To judge … any man … simply from his own point of view, is weak and illogical. History judges the man from its point of view. It condemns or applauds the point of view itself. The point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder. Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in favor of the evil-doer.

All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

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.

Good laws are the offspring of bad actions.

Society, by setting forth clear penalties for certain kinds of conduct sets its public ratification on moral judgments that this is wrong behavior and that it is deserving of punishment irrespective of whether the punishment will deter, rehabilitate or anything else. It is a way of society of defining what is wrong and what is seriously wrong.

Good laws derive from evil habits.

The criminal law tries to define moral standards.

There are certainly people who have committed horrific, evil acts in the history of humanity. I don't think Aaron Burr's one of them.

I feel that bad people exist everywhere. I've always maintained that it is not the industry that is good or bad: it's the people.

If I was a bad guy, I probably would be incarcerated.

Because we find somethings distasteful is not justification enough for us to deem them criminal.

Honestly, I don't understand why people get so worked up about a little murder!

You have an interesting set of morals," he observed. "Breaking out of jail is okay. But steal a car, and you sound totally outraged.

A crime is like a crack in reality, and it is the author's role to explore those cracks. As a writer, I like to see how they impinge on people.

I didn't grow up with any concept of people being deviants unless they mistreated others.

We are all responsible for our actions and our failures to act.

Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but from the bad intentions of men.

What is crime among the multitude is only vice among the few.

Treason is not own'd when 'tis decried; Successful crimes alone are justified.

Morality is a social necessity

As long as the law exists, there will be morality.

The more laws the more offenders