1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Cesare Beccaria

Cesare Beccaria Quotes

Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio was an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, and politician, who is widely considered as the most talented jurist and one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. He is well remembered for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments , which condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology and the Classical School of criminology. Beccaria is considered the father of modern criminal law and the father of criminal justice.According to John Bessler, Beccaria's works had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States. Wikipedia  

✵ 15. March 1738 – 20. November 1794
Cesare Beccaria photo

Works

On Crimes and Punishments
Cesare Beccaria: 2 quotes4 likes

Cesare Beccaria Quotes

“No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection, until it have been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorise the punishment of a citizen, so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? The dilemma is frequent. Either he is guilty, or not guilty. If guilty, he should only suffer the punishment ordained by the laws, and torture becomes useless, as his confession is unnecessary. If he be not guilty, you torture the innocent; for, in the eye of the law, every man is innocent, whose crime has not been proved.”

Cesare Beccaria book On Crimes and Punishments

On Crimes and Punishments (1764)

“[On the death penalty] Seems so absurd to me that the laws, that are the expression of the public will, that hate and punish the murder, make one themselves, and, to dissuade citizens from the murder, order a public murder.”

Cesare Beccaria book On Crimes and Punishments

Source: On Crimes and Punishments (1764), Chapter XXVIII

Similar authors

Jeremy Bentham photo
Jeremy Bentham30
British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer None
Francis Bacon photo
Francis Bacon295
English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and auth… None
Marquis de Sade photo
Marquis de Sade30
French novelist and philosopher None
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Niccolo Machiavelli130
Italian politician, Writer and Author None
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe185
German writer, artist, and politician None
Claude Adrien Helvétius photo
Claude Adrien Helvétius8
French philosopher None
Immanuel Kant photo
Immanuel Kant200
German philosopher None
Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza210
Dutch philosopher None
David Hume photo
David Hume138
Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian None
John Locke photo
John Locke144
English philosopher and physician None