199 Quotes by Thomas More

Isn’t this conception of absolute justice absolutely unjust?

If you do not find a remedy to these evils, it is a vain thing to boast of your severity in punishing theft, which though it may have the appearance of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient. For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy and then punish them for those crimes for which their first education disposes them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves and then punish them?

I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

It was evidently quite obvious to a powerful intellect like his that the one essential condition for a healthy society was equal distribution of goods – which I suspect is impossible under capitalism. For, when everyone’s entitled to get as much for himself as he can, all available property, however much there is of it, is bound to fall into the hands of a small minority, which means that everyone else is poor.

Nobody owns anything but everyone is rich – for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?

Pride thinks it’s own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of others.

But as to the question, ‘What more convenient way of punishment can be found?’ I think it much easier to find out that than to invent anything that is worse; why.

Why, even poverty itself, the one problem that has always seemed to need money for its solution, would promptly disappear if money ceased to exist.

Getting married is like putting one’s hand in a bag containing 99 serpents and one eel.