Lao Tzu Quotes
The more laws and orders are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The “thieves” won in the sense that TR was the choice of the vast majority of the Republican voters of the time, yet the party bosses manipulated the convention to deny Roosevelt the nomination. Taft was nominated, and Roosevelt ran on the Bull Moose Party and outpolled Taft, but they split the Republican vote and lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Odo of Chatillon-Sur-Marne. The Pope was addressing officials of Christian counties throughout Europe. Crime control then seems to have been a hot political issue as it is today.
This interesting historical quotation illustrates the fact that in almost every American generation there are those who believe that society has gone too far in protecting the rights of criminal suspects at the expense of law and order in the general society. This is nothing new. This is a classic argument given by those who would deny a defendant the Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The belief that an innocent man has nothing to fear from the police is refuted by the many cases of innocent men being convicted by evidence they have given in the belief that they were innocent, and served long jail sentences only to later be proved by DNA evidence that they could not possibly have been guilty. Since Nott’s day, society has not only found many cases where honest error was made by the police or prosecutors, but many where there was venal prosecutorial misconduct and defendants were jailed even though the authorities were aware of evidence of innocence and kept it secret. There have been a number of these cases where a defendant was on death row and about to be executed when it was found he was innocent. Probably there have been men wrongly executed. See {629444} for a probable example.
Wade was urging the Prince to abolish the Death by 1000 Cuts {641825} and simply rely on beheading the form of execution for “lesser” crimes. Note that the Prince’s fears and arguments parallel the same given by modern proponents of the Death Penalty—without it criminals would not be controlled and instability would ensue.
Even in 1837 there were already riots over slavery and race in a number of American Cities. What is particularly interesting about this quotation is Lincoln bemoaning the violance and contrasting the then present with the past when law and order prevailed. Even our greatest President has had a romantic view of the past with respect to law and order, as many Americans have done in almost every American era.
Lao Tzu (/ˈlaʊˈtsuː/ or /ˈlaʊˈdzʌ/), also rendered as Laozi (UK: /ˈlaʊˈzɪə/; US: /ˈlaʊˈtsiː/; Chinese: 老子, Mandarin: [làu̯.tsɹ̩]; commonly translated as "Old Master") and Lao-Tze (/ˈlaʊˈdzeɪ/), was an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer. He is the reputed author of the Tao Te Ching, the founder of philosophical Taoism, and a deity in religious Taoism and traditional Chinese religions.
