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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.

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More quotes by Teju Cole

Precisely because everyone takes a shortcut, nothing works and, for this reason, the only way to get anything done is to take another shortcut.”

Every Day Is for the Thief (2007)

And again, the empty space that was, I now saw and admitted, the obvious: the ruins of the World Trade Center. The place had become a metonym of its disaster.

Open City (2011)

Blacks, ‘we blacks’ had known rougher ports of entry [...] This was the acknowledgement he wanted, in his brusque fashion, from every ‘brother’ he met.

Open City (2011)

Sometimes it is hard to shake the feeling that, all jokes aside, there really is an epidemic of sorrow sweeping our world, the full brunt of which is being borne, for now, by only a luckless few.

Open City (2011)

I couldn't remember what life was like before I started walking.”

Open City (2011)

All Teju Cole quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Teju Cole (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.