Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a cons… - Thomas More

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?

If a king should fall under such contempt or envy that he could not keep his subjects in their duty but by oppression and ill usage, and by rendering them poor and miserable, it were certainly better for him to quit his kingdom than to retain it by such methods as make him, while he keeps the name of authority, lose the majesty due to it.

Men be so foolish as to have delight and pleasure in the doubtful glistering of a trifling little stone, which may behold any of the stars or else the sun itself.