“Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels. That is why so many actes gratuites are criminal: a man asserts his freedom by disobeying a law and retains a sense of self-importance because the law he has disobeyed is an important one. Much crime is magic, an attempt to make free with necessity.”
Book:Essays
