“To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”

— Walter M. Miller, Jr. , book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 29
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua

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Walter M. Miller, Jr. 37

American fiction writer 1923–1996

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Variant translation: There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing more than a silly anachronism … There is no such thing as right, except when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment. Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it in one word, need.
As translated by Horace B. Samuel (1916)
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Walter M. Miller, Jr. 37

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