Joseph Addison Quotes

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

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.

Power long entrusted either to single persons, or to bodies of men, generally increases itself so greatly as to become subversive of the intentions, and dangerous to the rights of those who delegated it.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

I can hardly sit on the bench and restrain my indignation at the tyrannous methods of the Department of Justice …. More lawless proceedings are hard to imagine.

Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government.

People of great power wield great power, but people of lesser power or people who have fallen out of power go to jail without adequate evidence, or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars.

So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem.

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.

My mind became agitated with the enquiry - why a nation, separated from us by an ocean more than three thousand miles in extent, should endeavor to enforce on us plans of subjugation, the most unnatural in themselves, unjust, inhuman in their operations, and unpractised even by the uncivilized savages of the wilderness?

Clever tyrants are never punished.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

People abusing their power makes me see red.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

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.

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

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

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

However low a man sinks he never reaches the level of the police.

Unmindful of the solemn duties of his office, and contrary to the sacred obligation, did conduct himself in a manner highly arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust.