There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of men for this treachery.
—Treebeard, The Lord of the Rings
If a clansman killed a royal python accidentally, he made sacrifices of ______ and performed an expensive burial ceremony such as was done for a great man. No punishment was prescribed for a man who killed the python knowingly. Nobody thought that such a thing could ever happen.
It's hard to know exactly what happened, ma'am. He and his friends appeared to have had themselves quite a little party. They just don't train ya to handle a scene like that. The law's a little murky in this area, but when we figure out how to charge him... I'll be back.
—Police Officer, Malcolm in the Middle
Captain's Log, stardate 43153.7 - We are departing the Rana system for Starbase 133. We leave behind a being of extraordinary power and conscience. I'm not certain if he should be praised or condemned; only... that he should be left alone.
—Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Legally, I can't make heads or tails of it. [...] I wouldn't know to whom to turn you over. And morally? Ethically? I don't know. [...] How can that ever be fixed? What price paid could ever be enough?
—Roy Greenhilt, The Order of the Stick
This is a crime so monstrous, so undreamt of in history throughout the Christian era up to the birth of Hitlerism, that the term "genocide" has had to be coined to define it and an accumulation of documents and testimonies has been needed to make it credible.
—Auguste Champetier de Ribes, French prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial (July 29, 1946)
