“Intellectual laziness is punishable by brain death. It is a natural law.”

Section 36
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Source: The Dying of the Light

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth
Context: I think putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished; for if a robber sees that his danger is the same if he is convicted of theft as if he were guilty of murder, this will naturally incite him to kill the person whom otherwise he would only have robbed; since, if the punishment is the same, there is more security, and less danger of discovery, when he that can best make it is put out of the way; so that terrifying thieves too much provokes them to cruelty.

Arguing for a Riot Act which prohibited 12 or more persons from congregating in public and which empowered county sheriffs to kill rioters, during debates prompted by Shays' Rebellion (1786 - 1787) and the death sentences given to many of the rebels; as quoted in Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States http://libcom.org/a-peoples-history-of-the-united-states-howard-zinn/5-a-kind-of-revolution (1980) Chapter 5 : A kind of Revolution; also quoted in "Completing the American Revolution" by Norman D. Livergood http://www.hermes-press.com/completing.htm

Source: Household Papers and Stories (1864), Ch. 6.

The Gorky Incident (1906)