Orson Scott Card Quotes

The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power.

The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.

Why do you all push us around?

Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice.

We are a government of laws. Any laws some government hack can find to louse up a man who's down.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don't understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

The law is solely made for the exploitation of those who do not understand it.

You know, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice?

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.

Laws are like spider's webs: If some poor weak creature comes up against them, it is caught; but a big one can break through and get away.

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.

Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

You can't trust anybody with power.

The truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy of all: impunity.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely

Given free play, the best policemen act badly more often than not, which is why they are given free play on any large scale only when their employers discern some social utility in their acting badly.

Suspect power more than vice.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.