Punishment quotes
981 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside punishment — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"But [your crime] will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride."
"Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime."
"To believe in a just law of cause and effect, carrying with it a punishment or a reward, is to believe in righteousness."
"I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment."
"Fear follows crime and is its punishment."
"Fear is secured by a dread of punishment."
"With younger children the greatest reward is to be able to pass on to a new stage in each subject. It is a punishment to a young child not to be allowed to use the apparatus but to sit still and do nothing."
"Punishment - The justice that the guilty deal out to those that are caught."
"The infernal storm, eternal in its rage, sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast; it whirls them, lashing them with punishment. When they are swept back past their place of judgment then come the shrieks, laments, and anguished cries; there they blaspheme God's almighty power."
"Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves."
"Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime."
"If you make someone feel guilty about their mistake, then you have not forgiven them. That guilt is itself punishment."
"In case anybody asks you about my position on capital punishment, you can tell them I favor it; and if they want to know why, you can tell them this story."
"Too frequent rewards indicate that the general is at the end of his resources; too frequent punishments that he is in acute distress."
"If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow."
"An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself."
"You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?"
"Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves."
"All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism."
"There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor."
