Punishment Quotes

“And where the offense is, let the great axe fall.”

“Tremble, thou wretch,That hast within thee undivulged crimesUnwhipped of justice.”

“Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.”

“Let him smell his way to Dover!”

“Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?”

“We need to understand the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment is what you do to someone; discipline is what you do for someone.”

“There is two types of Larceny, Petty and Grand. They are supposed to be the same in the eyes of the law, but judges always put a little extra on you for Petty, which is kind of a fine for stupidness.”

“We don't give our criminals much punishment, but we sure give 'em plenty of publicity.”

“What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing!”

“In this country we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.”

“In this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca.”

“Crime and punishment grow out of one stem.”

“An admiral should be put to death now and then to encourage the others.”

“The more estimable the offender, the greater the torment.”

“Fear follows crime and is its punishment.”

“The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.”

“Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.”

“We shall look on crime as a disease, and its physicians shall displace the judges, its hospitals displace the Galleys. Liberty and health shall be alike. We shall pour balm and oil where we formerly applied iron and fire; evil will be treated in charity, instead of in anger. This change will be simple and sublime.”

“But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.”

“If that's what the court can do, then punish me more then I've been punished already.”

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

“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.”

“The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.”

“What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.”

“A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurence of crime.”