"What an awful book the Corpus Juris is, this Bible of selfishness! I've always found the Roman code as detestable as the Romans themselves. These robbers want to safeguard their swag, and they seek to protect by law what they have plundered with the sword; hence the robber became a combination of the most odious kind, soldier and lawyer in one. Truly, we owe the theory of property, which was formerly a fact only, to these Roman thieves; and the much vaunted Roman Law on which all our present-day legislations and state institutions are based is nothing but the development of this theory in all its pernicious implications, in spite of the fact that this Law is diametrically opposed to religion, morals, common humanity and reason."
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Original Language: English
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Memoiren, 1884 in the magazine Die Gartenlaube. Translated in Max Brod, Heinrich Heine: The Artist in Revolt, New York University Press, 1957 (p.77).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine
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Heinrich Heine
1797 – 1856
deutscher Dichter, Schriftsteller und Journalist
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