Famous Quotes & Sayings

Nassau William Senior

The state, by relieving idleness, improvidence, or misconduct from punishment, and depriving abstinence and foresight of the reward, which have been provided for them by nature, may indeed destroy wealth, but most certainly will aggravate poverty.

Myrtle Reed

Legislation may at times be disobeyed, but never law, for the breaking brings swift punishment of its own.

Mort Sahl

I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?

John Ruskin

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

John Paul Stevens

[B]y requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

John Owen

The purpose of our holy and righteous God was to save his church, but their sin could not go unpunished. It was, therefore, necessary that the punishment for that sin be transferred from those who deserved it but could not bear it, to one who did not deserve it but was able to bear it.

John Milton

Back to thy punishment, False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings.

Norbert Wiener

The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

Mitch Albom

She felt worthless and hollow. There was no hope of fixing this. And when hope is gone, time is punishment.

Mitch Albom

When hope is gone, time is punishment.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

I take it that the judgment is an essential point in every conviction, let the punishment be fixed or not.

Mark Twain

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

Nick Saban

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.

Joseph Joubert

Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.

Murray Rothbard

Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error.

Samuel Butler

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

I'm not going to punish him for being hurt.

John Shelby Spong

The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

John Ray

Many without punishment, none without sin.

James Fox

It is the absence of hope, which equals the despair that is the punishment.

Gary Chapman

Something in our nature cries out to be loved by another. Isolation is devastating to the human psyche. That is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest of punishments.

Hedda Hopper

Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who have fallen from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone.

Mahatma Gandhi

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

Mahatma Gandhi

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

John Churton Collins

If we escape punishment for our vices, why should we complain if we are not rewarded for our virtues?

H. L. Mencken

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

H. L. Mencken

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

H. L. Mencken

The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy; he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.

George Herbert

Punishment is lame, but it comes.

Michelle Alexander

Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns.

Michelle Alexander

The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.

George Steinbrenner

Let's not talk punishment.

George Soros

You could adjust the punishment to fit the infraction. Even a small fine would be enough to bring an errant government to heel.