Justice & Law Quote by Paul Castellano

"We're not children here" is Castellano’s velvet-gloved threat: a demand that everyone in the room stop pretending the world runs on civics-class rules. It’s not just tough talk; it’s a signal that the conversation is happening inside a parallel order, one where maturity means accepting coercion as reality and morality as a negotiable story. The opening line flatters and disciplines at once: if you object, you’re naive; if you comply, you’re “grown.”

Then comes the sly self-editing: "The law is-how should I put it?" That pause isn’t uncertainty, it’s control. He’s staging discretion, reminding listeners that language itself is a tool of power. Even naming the law is risky, so he turns it into something banal: "A convenience". The move is brilliant in its cynicism. It drains the law of its supposed neutrality and recasts it as infrastructure for whoever can bend it.

The real payload lands in the correction: "a convenience for some people, and an inconvenience for other people". That’s the gangster’s version of legal realism, stripped of euphemism. Law isn’t an ideal; it’s a lever. Castellano frames compliance not as virtue but as cost-benefit, implying that his side can decide who pays. Contextually, it fits a boss who understood legitimacy as performance: the state has statutes; he has enforcement. The subtext is simple and chilling: adulthood, in this world, is recognizing which system actually collects.