Pt. I, ch. 3, sect. 3
Source: The Quiet American (1955)
2010s, 2019, October, Statement on the Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Letter X
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: I will be candid. I believe God is a just God, rewarding and punishing us exactly as we act well or ill. I believe that such reward and punishment follow necessarily from His will as revealed in natural law, as well as in the Bible. I believe that as the highest justice is the highest mercy, so He is a merciful God. That the guilty should suffer the measure of penalty which their guilt has incurred, is justice. What we call mercy is not the remission of this, but rather the remission of the extremity of the sentence attached to the act, when we find something in the nature of the causes which led to the act which lightens the moral guilt of the agent. That each should have his exact due is Just — is the best for himself. That the consequence of his guilt should he transferred from him to one who is innocent (although that innocent one he himself willing to accept it), whatever else it be, is not justice. We are mocking the word when we call it such. If I am to use the word justice in any sense at all which human feeling attaches to it, then to permit such transfer is but infinitely deepening the wrong, and seconding the first fault by greater injustice. I am speaking only of the doctrine of the atonement in its human aspect, and as we are to learn anything from it of the divine nature or of human duty.
“Innocence is very far from finding as much protection as crime.”
Il s'en faut bien que l'innocence ne trouve autant de protection que le crime.
Maxim 465.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
Book 3, Chapter 7 “Project NFB” (p. 135)
Oswald Bastable, The Warlord of the Air (1971)
Sherry, Michael (September 10, 1989). <i>The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon</i>, p. 287 (from "LeMay's interview with Sherry," interview "after the war," p. 408 n. 108). Yale University Press. ISBN-13: 978-0300044140.
“What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.”
Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau
1770s, Boston Massacre trial (1770)
Context: It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
Interview with Robin Wright, Washington Post (16 July 2006)
Quote, 2006
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401401_pf.html
