Teju Cole Quote

In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.

Teju Cole

In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.

Tags: life, law, human

Related Quotes

About Teju Cole

Teju Cole (born June 27, 1975) is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian. He is the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief (2007), a novel, Open City (2011), an essay collection, Known and Strange Things (2016), a photobook Punto d'Ombra (2016; published in English in 2017 as Blind Spot), and a second novel, Tremor (2023). Critics have praised his work as having "opened a new path in African literature."