Punishment Retribution Quotes

All emphasis in American prisons is on punishment, retribution, and disparagement, and almost none is on rehabilitation. ~ Conrad Black

What is it, I wonder, that they hope to Correct? I am what I am, irredeemably, irretrievably, implacably - as are mostof my fellow desperadoes here in Correctional Facility.
We are monsters. ~ Jeff Lindsay

To punish someone for your own mistakes or for the consequences of your own actions, to harm another by shifting blame that is rightly yours; this is a wretched and cowardly sin. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.
[On Water] ~ Guy De Maupassant

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed. ~ James Gilligan

As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles. ~ Simone Weil

Towards gnats and fleas we should show no pity. We would do right to hang petty thieves, petty calumniators, and slanderers. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

And then ESPN fired me. I did not think that was a fitting punishment. ~ Gregg Easterbrook

I got on a Dostoyevsky kick right after college. I started with 'Crime and Punishment,' went on to 'The Possessed' and then 'The Brothers Karamazov' and 'The Idiot.' ~ Charlie Trotter

The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics. ~ Bertrand Russell

Tonight, she'll bend for my punishment, tremble for my touch, and I'll risk it all to show her exactly what she means to me. ~ Pam Godwin

Standing on the pavement was a big fat man whom Dixon recognized as his barber. Dixon felt a deep respect for this man because of his impressive exterior, his rumbling bass voice, and his unsurpassable stock of information about the Royal Family. At that moment two rather pretty girls stopped at a pillar-box a few yards away. The barber, his hands clasped behind his back, turned and stared at them. An unmistakable expression of furtive lust came over his face; then, like a courtly shyopwalker, he moved slowly towards the two girls. Welch now accelerated again and Dixon, a good deal shaken hurriedly switched his attention to the other side of the road, where a cricket match was being played and the bowler was just running up to bowl. The batsman, another big fat man, swiped at the ball, missed it, and was violently hit by it in the stomach. Dixon had time to see him double up and the wicket-keeper begin to run forward before a tall hedge hid the scene.
Uncertain whether this pair of vignettes was designed to illustrate the swiftness of divine retribution or its tendency to mistake its target, Dixon was quite sure that he felt in some way overwhelmed... ~ Kingsley Amis

The fact that I had killed a man was really putting a crimp in my love
life.
Well, okay, to be strictly accurate, I hadn't killed him. But I had
helped. And I had watched enough of the Emmy Award-winning cops-andlawyers
drama Crime and Punishment on TV to know that cops weren't very
understanding about that sort of thing. I had even auditioned for the
role of a murderess in a C&P episode the previous year, but I didn't get
the part. So, since I had never even played a killer, actually being one
now was something of a novelty. ~ Laura Resnick

Since the late 1970's, the main focus of prisons has been punishment, not rehabilitation. It's hard to believe, but you would be hard-pressed to find a meaningful violence-prevention class in a federal or state penitentiary. And 'we the people' are footing the bill to keep these folks imprisoned. It costs on average $46,000 a year to keep an adult incarcerated in California and about the same for New York State. ~ James Fox

Order whatever punishment you like, from the coward's distance of a chain-lenght. You and Govart are two of a kind. ~ C.S. Pacat

The police can't use clubs or gas or dogs. I suppose they will have to use poison ivy. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isa. 53:5) ~ Angie Smith

Retribution seen in natural catastrophes is manufactured by all too eager
and all too pious people, each one convinced the world will end but spare them and them
alone. But we all know, the world is inherited by the obnoxious, not the righteous ~ Steven Erikson

To define his tendency in a word, I would say that Chekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, sadly, monotonously, during all the years of his literary activity, nearly a quarter of a century long, Chekhov was doing one alone: by one means or another he was killing human hopes. Herein, I hold, lies the essence of his creation. Hitherto it has been little spoken of. The reasons are quite intelligible. In ordinary language what Chekhov was doing is called crime, and is visited by condign punishment. But how can a man of talent be punished? ~ Lev Shestov

Let go."
"Make me let you go."
She looked at Arin. Whatever he saw in her eyes loosened his hands. "Kestrel," he said more quietly, "I have been whipped before. Lashes and death are different things."
"I won't die."
"Let Irex set my punishment."
"You're not listening to me." She would have said more, but realized that his hands still rested on her shoulders. A thumb was pressing gently against her collarbone.
Kestrel caught her breath. Arin startled, as if out of sleep, and pulled away.
He had no right, Kestrel thought. He had no right to confuse her. Not now, when she needed a clear mind.
Everything had seemed so simple last night in the close dark of the carriage.
"You are not allowed," Kestrel said, "to touch me."
Arin's smile was bitter. "I suppose that means we are no longer friends."
She said nothing.
"Good," he said, "then you can have no reason for fighting Irex."
"You don't understand."
"I don't understand your godforsaken Valorian honor? I don't understand that your father would probably rather see you gutted than live with a daughter who turned away from a duel?"
"You have very little faith in me, to think that Irex would win."
He raked a hand through his short hair. "Where is my honor in all this, Kestrel?"
They locked eyes, and she recognized his expression. It was the same one she had seen across the Bite and Sting table. The same one she had seen in the pit, when the auctioneer ~ Marie Rutkoski

Given the sin of impiety through which they [the Romans] sinned against the divine nature [by idolatry], the punishment that led them to sin against their own nature followed ... I say, therefore, that since they changed into lies [by idolatry] the truth about God, He brought them to ignominious passions, that is, to sins against nature; not that God led them to evil, but only that he abandoned them to evil ... ~ Thomas Aquinas

Many critics complain that the criminal justice system is heavy-handed and unfair to minorities. We hear a great deal about capital punishment, excessively punitive drug laws, supposed misuse of eyewitness evidence, troublingly high levels of black male incarceration, and so forth.
So to assert that black Americans suffer from too little application of the law, not too much, seems at odds with common perception. But the perceived harshness of American criminal justice and its fundamental weakness are in reality two sides of a coin, the former a kind of poor compensation for the latter. Like the schoolyard bully, our criminal justice system harasses people on small pretexts but is exposed as a coward before murder. It hauls masses of black men through its machinery but fails to protect them from bodily injury and death. It is at once oppressive and inadequate. ~ Jill Leovy

The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment ... It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society. ~ Thurgood Marshall

More often and more insistently as that time recedes, we are asked by the young who our "torturers" were, of what cloth were they made. The term torturers alludes to our ex-guardians, the SS, and is in my opinion inappropriate: it brings to mind twisted individuals, ill-born, sadists, afflicted by an original flaw. Instead, they were made of the same cloth as we, they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save the exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly. They were, for the greater part, diligent followers and functionaries, some frantically convinced of the Nazi doctrine, many indifferent, or fearful of punishment, or desirous of a good career, or too obedient. All of them had been subjected to the terrifying miseducation provided for and imposed by the schools created in accordance with the wishes of Hitler and his collaborators, and then completed by the SS "drill." Many had joined this militia because of the prestige it conferred, because of its omnipotence, or even just to escape family problems. Some, very few in truth, had changes of heart, requested transfers to the front lines, gave cautious help to prisoners or chose suicide. Let it be clear that to a greater or lesser degree all were responsible, but it must bee just as clear that behind their responsibility stands that the great majority of Germans who accepted in the beginning, out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and na ~ Primo Levi

It's a far greater friend, one who speaks the truth despite risk of retribution. ~ Dawn Jayne

A bad composition carries its own punishment - contempt and ridicule; a good one excites envy and entails upon its author a thousand mortifications; he finds himself assailed by partial and ill-humored criticism; one man finds fault with the plan, another with the style, a third with the precept which strives to inculcate; and they who cannot succeed in finding fault with the book, employ themselves in stigmatizing its author: they maliciously rake out from obscurity every little circumstance which may throw ridicule upon his private character or conduct and aim at wounding the man since they cannot hurt the writer. ~ Matthew Gregory Lewis

I didn't want to love you," he says. "I couldn't help it."

- Julien, Retribution ~ S.E. Lund

If the police catch someone using their mobile phone whilst driving they should have the right to confiscate the person's license with immediate effect, AND confiscate their car keys so they have to walk home. I don't care if they're 200 or 400 miles from home, take their keys off them.
And no need to waste the court's time over this one. They don't go to court. The police should have the power to write out a year's driving ban on the spot and force them to surrender their license.
Anyone got any arguments over this one? ~ Karl Wiggins

He whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Mullahs from the TNSM preached that the earthquake was a warning from God. They said it was caused by women's freedom and obscenity. If we did not mend our ways and introduce sharia or Islamic law, they shouted in their thundering voices, more severe punishment would come. ~ Malala Yousafzai

The method of collective punishment so far has proved effective. ~ Moshe Dayan

I had never before spent a night with a woman, had someone lying by my side in the quietness of the dark, hearing her breath and feeling her warmth beside me.
It is a sin, and it is a crime. I say it frankly, for I have been taught so all my life, and only madmen have said otherwise. The Bible says it, the fathers of the church have said it, the prelates now repeat it without end, and all the statues of the land prescribe punishment for what we did that night. Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. It must be so, for the Bible speaks only God's truth. I sinned against the law, against God's word reported, I abused my family and exposed them even more to risk of public shame, I again risked permanent exclusion from those rooms and books which were my delight and my whole occupation; yet in all the years that have passed since I have regretted only one thing: that it was but a passing moment, never repeated, for I have never been closer to God, nor felt His love and goodness more. ~ Iain Pears

Because we do not understand all the circumstances surrounding someone's suicide, the level of the person's accountability, and the penalty that the Lord, in his infinite love and wisdom, may see fit to inflict upon the person, we must avoid judgment. Regardless of those circumstances and the Lord's divinely imposed punishment, followers of Christ are to be loving and compassionate to those who are hurt by the act of suicide. ~ Brent L. Top

Yet in his own estimate, one theme in particular dominated all others: the growing tyranny of the majority, the ever-increasing and most formidable barriers raised by the majority around the free expression of opinion, and, as a result, the frightening oneness of American thinking, the absence of eccentricity and divergence from the norm.

A perfect liberty of the Mind exists in America, said Tocqueville, just as long as the sovereign majority has yet to decide its course. But once the majority has made up its mind, then all contrary thought must cease, and all controversy must be abandoned, not at the risk of death or physical punishment, but rather at the more subtle and more intolerable pain of ostracism, of being shunned by one's fellows, of being rejected by society.

Throughout history kings and princely rulers had sought without success to control human thought, that most elusive and invisible power of all. Yet where absolute monarchs had failed, democracy succeeds, for the strength of the majority is unlimited and all pervasive, and the doctrines of equality and majority rule have substituted for the tyranny of the few over the many the more absolute, imperious and widely accepted tyranny of the many over the few. ~ Richard D. Heffner

Let the punishment match the offense. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. ~ Albert Einstein

Love is not coercion, and the state is only an agent of coercion. It has no other function and can work no other way. Its job is to be the last resort in society: the coercion of criminals through punishment. Its nature and its funding are coercion. Any solution it offers will inescapably be coercive. When we make it the primary agent of healing, we fundamentally alter the nature of society. We ought to have a society in which the power of love drives us to break down all social, class, and political barriers, and to effect healing through private means, private associations, private institutions, counselors, networks, schools, hospitals, charities, businesses, etc. It ought to be driven by giving. Love is giving; selfishness is taking. When we make the state the mover, we make the primary solution one of taking rather than giving. This inverts God's designed order for all human relations, including race relations and racial healing. ~ Joel McDurmon

They started a great fire in the middle of the market, and from this fire they took burning logs and torches, and these they threw onto the roofs of most of the homes within a one-mile radius. The few men who resisted were shot. This was effectively the end of any kind of life in Marial Bai for some time. Again, the rebels for whom this was retribution were nowhere to be found. ~ Dave Eggers

Jesus' sacrifice wasn't just a nice plan to get us out of trouble. His punishment replaced ours! Because God so loved the world, Christ paid the debt we owed. ~ Phylicia Masonheimer

People have themselves to blame for their decisions; that is undeniable. But don't we have a legal obligation to structure a system that is balanced, not savagely slanted against minorities and the poor? Don't we have a fiscal responsibility to take a commonsense approach to reducing the cost to taxpayers? Don't we have a moral responsibility to offer redemption to someone who has paid his debt instead of unyielding retribution against him and his family?... Aren't we a nation that believes our fellow citizens deserve, at some point, a second chance? ~ Cory Booker

Publication is almost certainly a punishment for having written a book. ~ Joseph O'Neill

Let us now turn to the question of the effects of physical punishment on children. This research should also not give solace to advocates of the Strict Father model. The major research indicates that having strict parents who perform painful corporal punishment in childhood leads to domestic violence, aggression, and delinquency in later life. Take ~ George Lakoff

If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. ~ Ida B. Wells

Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just. ~ Simone Weil

Was that not the way it ought to be? The beauty of Bruges lay in being dead. From the top of the belfry it appeared completely dead to Borluut. He did not want to go back down ever again. His love for the town was greater, was endless. From now on it was a kind of frenzy, his final sensual pleasure. Constantly climbing high above the world, he started to enjoy death. There is danger in rising too high, into the unbreathable air of the summits. Disdain for the world, for life itself brings its own punishment. ~ Georges Rodenbach

I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying. ~ Thomas Bernhard

I have great trouble with the people who envision AIDS as a punishment from God. ~ Russell Johnson

Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.' ~ Jeff Lindsay

On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. ~ Paul Bloom

Fraud in the insurance industry is calculated to be $100 billion to $300 billion a year, a cost that gets passed directly to consumers in the form of higher premiums. All told, combined public- and private-sector fraud costs every household in the United States probably around $5,000 a year - or roughly the equivalent of working four months at a minimum-wage job. A hunter-gatherer community that lost four months' worth of food would face a serious threat to its survival, and its retribution against the people who caused that hardship would be immediate and probably very violent. Westerners ~ Sebastian Junger

Instead, our system of "corrections" is about arm's-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in. V ~ Piper Kerman

-Well, what happens with the River of Hades in the end?
-Not a thing. It's an infernal punishment precisely because nothing happens. ~ Kobo Abe

There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess. ~ A.S. Byatt