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Quotes About Punishment

On pain of death, no person be so bold.
~ William Shakespeare
There is no punishment too extreme for the crazy bastard who came up with the idea of fidelity. To demand of human flesh fidelity.
~ Philip Roth
What's shocking is not His monstrous features—plenty of gods are monstrous, it seems almost to have been a prerequisite—but that there's no recourse from Him. No power beyond His. The most monstrous feature of God, my friends, is the totalitarianism. This vengeful, seething God, this punishment-ordaining bastard, is ultimate! Mind if I have a Pepsi?
~ Philip Roth
In a sort of negative proof of the power of prayer, three times God commanded Jeremiah to stop praying; God wanted no alteration in his plans to punish a rebellious nation.
~ Philip Yancey
if I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved. I deserved punishment and got forgiveness. I deserved wrath and got love. I deserved debtor's prison and got instead a clean credit history. I deserved stern lectures and crawl-on-your-knees repentance; I got a banquet—Babette's feast—spread for me.
~ Philip Yancey
The sufferings of Jesus show us that pain comes to us not as punishment but rather as a testing ground for faith that transcends pain. In truth, pain redeemed impresses me more than pain removed.
~ Philip Yancey
And the worst of it was, Irene could not claim with any certainty that this savage retribution was wrong. She had always thought other people would and should suffer for their callousness, but had never realized that she was as guilty as they and deserved similar treatment.
~ Piers Anthony
Listen, then, says the angry Sophist (Thrasymachus), I proclaim that might is right, and justice is the interest of the stronger. The different forms of government make laws, democratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, with a view to their respective interests; and these laws, so made by them to serve their interests, they deliver to their subjects as justice, and punish as unjust anyone who transgresses them.
~ Plato
Every man ought in every way to guard himself against doing wrong . . . And if he . . . does wrong, he ought of his own accord to go where he will be immediately punished; he will run to the judge, as he would to the physician, in order that the disease of injustice may not be rendered chronic and become the incurable cancer of the soul.
~ Plato
The punishment we suffer, if we refuse to take an interest in matters of government, is to live under the government of worse men.
~ Plato
This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;--it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all
~ Plato
Now in the days of Cronos there existed a law respecting the destiny of man, which has always been, and still continues to be in Heaven,—that he who has lived all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus.
~ Plato
SOCRATES: On the other hand, if the unjust be not punished, then, according to you, he will be happy? POLUS: Yes. SOCRATES: But in my opinion, Polus, the unjust or doer of unjust actions is miserable in any case,—more miserable, however, if he be not punished and does not meet with retribution, and less miserable if he be punished and meets with retribution at the hands of gods and men. POLUS: You are maintaining a strange doctrine, Socrates.
~ Plato
Los hombres todos están persuadidos de que la virtud puede ser adquirida. Porque nadie castiga a un hombre malo sólo por ha sido malo, a no ser que se trate de alguna bestia feroz que castigue para saciar su crueldad. Pero el que castiga con razón, castiga, no por las faltas pasadas, porque ya no es posible que lo que ya ha sucedido deje de suceder, sino por las faltas que puedan sobrevenir, para que el culpable no reincida y sirva de ejemplo a los demás su castigo.
~ Plato
But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being taught.
~ Plato
I had really lost her, and the madness with which I avenged my mistakes on myself, by assaulting my physical self in several senseless ways in order to punish my moral self, contributed very much to the bodily ills under which I lost some of the best years of my life.
~ Rudiger Safranski
To indulge it is to breed it. To punish it is to feed it. Madness knows no bridle but the knife. —SCYLVENDI
~ R. Scott Bakker
So Miss Curdy said I had to be punished. She gave me a choice of punishments. One: I could come into the gym after school every day and inflate all the basketballs — by mouth — until my head exploded. Or two: I could coach the first-grade soccer team. I chose number two. The wrong choice.
~ R.L. Stine
My dream is that Cole gets punished for mouthing off the way he usually does. And his punishment is that he has to feed the chickens for the rest of his life. Everyone has to have a dream — right?
~ R.L. Stine
Two hours after the melon disaster, I sprawled on the floor of my room. Grounded. With nothing to do.
~ R.L. Stine
Don't worry...Someone will pay for your suffering. Heavily. With screaming.
~ Rachel Caine
a change of governance that could soon mean different heads lofted in punishment for the telling of different truths. She wanted to breathe the warning into all their ears: never let your true thought be known, for it is by truth that you are noosed and for truth burnt.
~ Rachel Kadish
those who wish to punish the current and future generations for the inequities of a generation long gone, and who equate justice with revenge, are the most dangerous people in the world.
~ Dean Koontz
have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.' 
~ Dean Koontz