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. – Leo Tolstoy, What I Believe

It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it. – Remy de Gourmont

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have. – Michel de Montaigne, translated