A Quote by Montesquieu

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Montesquieu

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Acts Laws Only Punish

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Montesquieu
French - Philosopher
January 18, 1689 - February 10, 1755

The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts.

Baron de Montesquieu

It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.

Thomas Jefferson

The object of a bunker or trap is not only to punish a physical mistake, to punish lack of control, but also to punish pride and egotism.

Charles B. Macdonald

Acts and laws are for people. People are not for Acts and laws. Acts and laws should be simple.

Uddhav Thackeray

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Oliver Goldsmith

We must judge of a man's motives from his overt acts.

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

I don't feel that I or Canada has to prove anything through big, loud, overt acts.

Justin Trudeau

A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.

Thomas Paine

...You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.

Lionel Shriver

The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

Thomas Jefferson

We ought to be very cautious in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty, and may be the origin of a number of petty acts of tyranny if the legislator be not on his guard; for as such an accusation does not bear directly on the overt acts of a citizen, but refers to the idea we entertain of his character.

Baron de Montesquieu

Criminal conspiracy requires not only that the conspirators know that a crime is going to be committed, but that they knowingly intend to help each other commit the crime - and then commit certain overt acts in connection with that conspiracy.

Richard Painter

It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts.

Charles Evans Hughes

It is time enough, for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere [in the propagation of religious teachings] when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.

Thomas Jefferson

I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws but to repeal them.

Barry Goldwater

. . . nothing could be more grotesquely unjust than a code of morals, reinforced by laws, which relieves men from responsibility for irregular sexual acts, and for the same acts drives women to abortion, infanticide, prostitution, and self-destruction.

Suzanne La Follette

A Quote by Montesquieu

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