Quotes About Punishment

My own view on capital punishment is that it is morally justified, but that the government is often so inept and corrupt that innocent people might die as a result. Thus, I personally oppose capital punishment.

If the people are governed by laws and punishment is used to maintain order, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are governed by virtue and rules of propriety are used to maintain order, they will have a sense of shame and will become good as well.

Those subject to capital punishment are real human beings, with their own backgrounds and narratives. By contrast, those whose lives are or might be saved by virtue of capital punishment are mere 'statistical people.' They are both nameless and faceless, and their deaths are far less likely to be considered in moral deliberations.

As a Catholic, you can have two views on capital punishment. You can think, let Caesar do what Caesar needs to do, and the law says you can impose capital punishment, so you impose it. You can [also] be a Catholic who says we can't kill, we can't kill babies and we can't kill adults. If you let a decision be driven by your personal views, then you are not doing what a judge needs to do, which is enforce the laws of the society that you are in. But you can control your own behavior, and that is the choice that the church and God gives us - what kind of people are we going to be.

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

Obama said, basically, "I wouldn't let any son of mine play football, though I do watch." And that struck me as remarkable! It's like he's saying, yeah, let some other set of parents or guardians put their boys up for that kind of punishment (and for my amusement). But not mine! It's just abject hypocrisy from a guy who should know better.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment-or at least much handicap-to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.

The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject, however, pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason.

I get paid for seeing that my clients have every break the law allows. I have knowingly defended a number of guilty men. But the guilty never escape unscathed. My fees are sufficient punishment for anyone.

If the emperor had capriciously decreed the death of the most eminent and virtuous citizen of the republic, the cruel order would have been executed without hesitation by the ministers of open violence or of specious injustice. The caution, the delay, the difficulty with which he proceeded in the condemnation and punishment of a popular bishop, discovered to the world that the privileges of the church had already revived a sense of order and freedom in the Roman government.

The fear of hell, the punishment of sin, how the modern parent revolts from such teaching. Yet I will assert that far from doing us children harm, it was a sure foundation to the world of our confidence, a master girder in our palace of delight.

God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it .

Ever since Eve started it all by offering Adam the apple, woman's punishment has been to supply a man with food then suffer the consequences when it disagrees with him.

No one who has ever done anything really great or successful has ever done it simply because he was attracted by what we call a 'reward' or by the fear of what we call a 'punishment.'

Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil... a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons... never to truth.

Lying to a committee is a very grave abuse, and there ought to be a clear punishment.

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.

Real power does not consist in the ability to inflict capital punishment upon the subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against the world.

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

It is hard to tell if capital punishment has such an effect. And even if, in some contexts it has (such as in the American South with a very high incidence of murder), this effect may very well go away if a decent welfare state was replaced for the existing social order.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

He has everything a boxer needs except speed, stamina, a punch, and ability to take punishment. In other words, he owns a pair of shorts.

Nobody ever got anything from God on the grounds that he deserved it. Haven fallen, man deserves only punishment and death. So if God answers prayer it's because God is good. From His goodness, His lovingkindness, His good-natured benevolence, God does it! That's the source of everything.

Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God." "That's what my grandmother used to say," said Brutha automatically. "Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady." "She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha. "A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

You could adjust the punishment to fit the infraction. Even a small fine would be enough to bring an errant government to heel.

Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.

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

If you remove the fear of criminal punishment for the nation's political and financial elites - as we have done - what possible constraint on their behavior does anyone think will remain?

I prefer to do right and get no thanks than to do wrong and receive no punishment.

Hades raised an eyebrow. When he sat forward in his throne, shadowy faces appeared in the folds of his black robes, faces of torment,as if the garment was stitched of trapped souls from the Fields of Punishment, trying to get out. The ADHD part of me wondered, off-task, whether the rest of his clothes were made the same way. What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get woven into Hades' underwear?

The bill neither confers nor abridges the rights of anyone but simply declares that in civil rights there shall be equality among all classes of citizens and that all alike shall be subject to the same punishment.

You have to not worry or doubt or punish yourself. All the worry, doubt and punishment will not add one second to your life, you know?

Prefer punishment to disgraceful gain; for the one is painful but once, but the other for one's whole life.

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality.

I always feel the cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling or something because I feel that I have real perspective on this particular issue of punishment in society.

Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment.

Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.

As an American I wanted to explore... why are we the only first world country that still has capital punishment? Is it because we're too afraid to really examine the system, or is it because we really truly believe that this is the best way to deter future crime?

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.

In the short term, corporal punishment may produce obedience. But it is a fact documented by research that in the long term the results are inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying, cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that of one's own children, even drug addiction and suicide, unless there are enlightened or at least helping witnesses on hand to prevent that development.

The guilty is he who meditates a crime; the punishment is his who lays the plot.

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.

Now that I think about it, you’d have to be a glutton for punishment to keep coming near me given my acerbic personality where you’re concerned. (Tory)

It is futile to debate on what is wrong and right with people whose remorse is not their punishment, nor is it reasonable to care about their promise and criticism.