Quotes About Punishment

Where does guilt and punishment lie, and are we not more expressive over remorse or guilt when other people see the badness in us?

If one is going to plagiarize, it pays to be in politics, where the expectation for remorse and the likelihood of punishment are minimal.

I reiterate my proposal of creating life sentences for politicians who make deals with organized criminals. They deserve the maximum penalty because a politician that makes deals with criminals - I've said it, and I repeat it - is no longer a politician but just another 'capo.'

My experiences have also convinced me that sexual harassment is very rarely publicly punished after it is reported, and then only after a pattern of relatively egregious offenses.

There are no authentic reports in any of the Muslim books of history of the Prophet Muhammad punishing anyone for same-sex acts.

Keeping some people behind bars often hurts more than it helps - not only for the people who had been incarcerated and their families but also for society in general.

In the end, crime doesn't pay.

Incarceration is supposed to keep the community safe from your behavior.

While mass incarceration is a national crisis, it was built locally.

We should be extremely cautious about continuing to increase sentences as a routine response to concerns over crime.

That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man.

For "as great a blessing as government is," the Rev. Peter Whitney explained, "like other blessings, it may become a scourge, a curse, and severe punishment to a people." What made it so, what turned power into a malignent force, was not its own nature so much as the nature of man—his susceptibility to corruption and his lust for self-aggrandizement.

You lucky I ain't taking a hammer to you, but you're not worth a life sentence.

In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the seventh circle of hell for people who charged usurious interest rates.

Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls.

No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?

The warmest feelings of Christendom cluster round the Crucifix, and he, the crucified one, is adored with passionate devotion, not as martyr for truth, not as witness for God, not as faithful to death, but as the substitute for his worshippers, as he who bears in their stead the wrath of God, and the punishment due to sin.

What children learn from punishment is that might makes right. When they are old and strong enough, they will try to get their own back; thus many children punish their parents by acting in ways distressing to them.

Punishment may make us obey the orders we are given, but at best it will only teach an obedience to authority, not a self-control which enhances our self-respect.

When we feel guilt, we feel badly about something we did or neglected to do. When we feel shame, we feel badly about who we are. Put another way: guilty people fear punishment, shamed people fear abandonment. When we feel guilty we need to learn it's okay to make mistakes. When we feel shame we need to learn it's okay to be who we are.

The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.

To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep. If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed. Anyone who steals must certainly make restitution, but if they have nothing, they must be sold to pay for their theft.

MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.