Quotes About Punishment

The principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment.

It is significant that, as innocent babies are killed, and capital punishment is withheld from their murderers, the same men who plead for the murderer's life also demand the “right” to abortion. Usually, the same picketers that carry a sign one day, “Abolish Capital Punishment,” also carry “Legalize Abortion” another day. When this is called to their attention, their answer is, “There is no contradiction involved.” They are right: the thesis is “condemn the innocent and free the guilty.

The answer comes to me through studying the lives of the Rosa Parks and the Vaclav Havels and the Nelson Mandelas and the Dorothy Days of this world. These are people who have come to understand that no punishment that anybody could lay on us could possibly be worse than the punishment we lay on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment, by living a divided life, by failing to make that fundamental decision to act and speak on the outside in ways consonant with what we know to be true on the inside.

A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?

If anyone have intercourse with a pig or a dog, he shall die. If a man have intercourse with a horse or a mule, there is no punishment. But he shall not approach the king, and shall not become a priest... If a pig spring upon a man for intercourse, there is no punishment.

Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them - even though they exaggerated this issue - he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.

What is this thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey, and if you don't obey, it will compel you by force - all governments, all law and authority finally rest on force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.

I have been brought up in a culture where capital punishment is indeed anathema. I have always thought of myself as a principled opponent to capital punishment. However, when thinking about how the topic is handled in other cultures, in particular the American, Russian and Chinese ones, I have realised that my own tack on the issue was utterly superficial.

Pain is not a punishment. And pleasure is not a reward. You could argue that failure is not punishment and Success is not reward. They're just failure and success. You can choose how you respond.

The way the terrorist is trained to operate, especially the suicide terrorists, makes punishment and the threat of punishment far less valuable to those who would prevent the crime

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it.

The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.

Leo Valdez deserved a special punishment," she [Khione] said. "I have sent him to a place from which he can never return.

One of my constant reminders was, "End practice on a happy note." I wanted the boys to want to come out to practice, and I wanted them to get a certain amount of pleasure out of basketball. It's a game. It should be fun. So I always tried to counterbalance any criticism in practice with a bit of praise. I wanted my players to feel that the worst punishment I could give them was to deny them the privilege of practicing. If they did not want to practice, I did not want them there.

Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices. To equate the lives of killers with those of victims is the worst kind of moral equivalency. If capital punishment is state murder, then imprisonment is state kidnapping and restitution is state theft.

Violence comes from the belief that other people cause our pain and therefore deserve punishment.

Will not be punished for your anger, your anger is the punishment.

The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

When I got into "Anna Karenina" and "Brothers Karamazov" and "Crime and Punishment," that was the stuff that - that had a big effect on me, because it was so psychological.

Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.

I just can't imagine my life without Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov. I can spin off of that and talk about Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy. I could talk about other novels, but for me it's Dostoevsky. His sheer size and grandeur, his sacramentality, his ecclesiology, and his sense of the human predicament are as powerful as it gets. Can't imagine not reading the Russians.

To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure.

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

In Western Europe and North America some things are better than they were - at least relative to their moral nadirs - such as labour legislation, the opening of the professions to women, intolerance for domestic violence, but so much is still morally unacceptable - the weapons trade, cruel and unusual punishment, economic parasitism.

Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars

May the death penalty, an unworthy punishment still used in some countries, be abolished throughout the world.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder...We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it.

My creed of nonviolence does not favour the punishment of thieves and dacoits and even murderers.

That's my punishment in hell, shoveling horseshit.

I am always shocked to discover how many people believe that hardships are a punishment from God! When people face tests or see others facing tests, they assume Allah must be angry with them. SubhannAllah! Remember which people were tested the most: The Prophets! And they were the closest to Allah. Every hardship is good for you-if it brings you closer to Him!

Death is a punishment to some, to others a gift and to many a favour.

That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.

The issue of the American justice system is so much broader than any one party, or any area of the country, or any one policy, because the totality of it is that it's driven by the underlying politics. The underlying politics are white fear and wrath and punishment. And that's what tends to be consistent. As I say in the book, that's the magnet that's drawing the iron filings into alignment. That's the thing that's powering all of it. The gravitational pole of those politics operate on each of these disparate little actors.

If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.

I don't know if the question is whether you believe in capital punishment anymore. I think the greater question is its effectiveness and given the choices we face in California, should we have a merit-based discussion on its effectiveness and costs?

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

Let the punishment fit the crime.

I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.

Disgrace does not consist in the punishment, but in the crime.

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.

If people really see that Christ has removed the fear of punishment from them by taking it into Himself, they won't do whatever they want, they'll do whatever He wants.

The fear of climatic catastrophes is an ancient one and not unlike our fear of strangers. In the past, people believed that the climate almost always changes for the worse, and only rarely for the better - God's punishment for sinful behavior.

Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.

We are heading towards catastrophe. I think the world is going to pieces. I am very pessimistic. Why? Because the world hasn't been punished yet, and the only punishment that could be adequate is the nuclear destruction of the world.

I have great trouble with the people who envision AIDS as a punishment from God.

I hate jealousy. At least it's its own punishment; it makes me feel like hell.