Quotes Library

December 25, 2025

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France (1844–1924), French poet, journalist, novelist, The Portable Curmudgeon, Jon Winokur, ed. (New York: 1987), p.167

You are a law-maker, so what legal models (that is, purposes served by laws) do you support? Punitive? Rehabilitative? Restorative?

Those 27 words lay out better than anyone ever has the argument for equity over mere equality.


More Quotes

October 21, 2025
The revolutionary spirit is mightily convenient in this: that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas.
February 20, 2025
You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometime you have to be evasive.
November 27, 2025
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
Page 121 of 122