Treason

In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation or state. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor.

Sourced

• Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
  Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
  • Sir John Harington, Epigrams, Book iv, Epistle 5. Compare: "Prosperum ac felix scelus/ Virtus vocatur" ("Successful and fortunate crime/ is called virtue"), Seneca, Herc. Furens, ii. 250.

• The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
  • T. S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

• If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
  • E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

• All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if the nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.
  • Dame Rebecca West, "The Meaning of Treason" (Revised edition, Penguin Books, 1965), Conclusion, p. 413.

Unsourced

• America's state religion, is patriotism, a phenomenon which has convinced many of the citizenry that "treason" is morally worse than murder or rape.
  • William Blum

• Bad literature is a form of treason.
  • Joseph Brodsky

• Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third ...may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.
  • Patrick Henry

• Corporations cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.
  • Edward Coke

• I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
  • Samuel Johnson

• In monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.
  • Samuel Adams

• Ingratitude is treason to mankind.
  • James Thomson

• New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.
  • George Bernard Shaw

• Pity is treason.
  • Maximilien Robespierre

• This principle is old, but true as fate, Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.
  • Thomas Dekker

• Truth is a trust, [whereas] falsehood [is] treason.
  • Abu Bakr

• Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers.
  • Benjamin Franklin