#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.”

“It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.”

“I love peace, and am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.”

“What a curious kind of fool a girl is. Never been licked in school. What's a licking?”

“Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.”

“I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.”

“No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong -- only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but 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.”

“My creed of nonviolence does not favour the punishment of thieves and dacoits and even murderers.”

“It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.”

“It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.”

“The death penalty is reserved for people who do not”

“Power is of two kinds: one is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love.”

“If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.”

“The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other. They are worse than ever when, at the termination of their punishment, they return to society.”

“I don't doubt that every prince would like to be both; but since it is hard to accomodate these qualities, if you have to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. For it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain....[love] is a link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break anything they think doing so serves their advantage; but fear involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape.”

“Cruelties should be committed all at once.”

“Men are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared because love is held together by a chain of obligation which, since men are wretched creatures, is broken on every occasion in which their own interests are concerned; but fear is sustained by dread of punishment which will never abandon you.”

“Fear is secured by a dread of punishment.”

“Experience gained in two schools under my control has taught me that punishment does not purify, if anything, it hardens children.”

“The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely.”

“Let the punishment be equal with the offence.[Lat., Noxiae poena par esto.]”

“I must not refrain from saying that India can gain more by waiving the right of punishment.”

“A judge who cannot punish, in the end associates themselves with the criminal.”

“Let the punishment match the offense.”

“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!”

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”