Mark Borsi

“Dudley and Stephens’s main holding, about the need to defend individual rights in the face of utilitarian calculations, is an important moral and legal touchstone. Dictators have, throughout history, sought to justify atrocities through hedonic calculus. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin insisted that their concentration camps, planned starvations, and other forms of mass murder were a step on the way toward building a better world. There will always be tyrants who argue that the dead bodies piling up will promote the greatest good for the greatest number. Dudley and Stephens represents a firm rebuke”
― Adam Cohen, Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, An Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History

“Instead of the moral clarity of a prohibition against murder, it allowed people to make their own decisions about whether and when it might be right to kill someone.”
― Adam Cohen, Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, An Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History

“The two dictators toured the city’s historic sites, including a several-hour visit to the Uffizi and a walk across Vasari’s secret corridor above the Ponte Vecchio. While Mussollini was bored stiff by the sightseeing (“It would take a week to get through all this art,” he muttered under his breath), Hitler was absorbed by masterpieces like Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo.19 The”
― Joseph Luzzi, Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance

“The Nazis put party sympathizers in high-ranking positions and removed many museum personnel, especially those of Jewish origin, as well as works associated with what they believed to be a decadent avant-gardism (what Hitler called “degenerate art”).14 The Nazi Party destroyed (or secretly added to their personal collections) scores of modern artworks from Lippmann’s Kupferstichkabinett, especially German Expressionist prints and drawings.15 All told, the regime removed some 16,000 pieces of art from German collections, including 64 paintings, 26 sculptures, and 326 drawings from Berlin’s National Gallery.16”
― Joseph Luzzi, Botticelli's Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance