37 Quotes About Punishment

In the intricate tapestry of human experience, punishment has been a theme interwoven with justice, morality, and societal order. Exploring the concept of punishment through the lens of timeless quotes offers a profound glimpse into the diverse perspectives that have shaped our understanding of retribution and reform. These 37 compelling quotes delve into the complexities and moral dilemmas surrounding punishment, shedding light on its impact on individuals and societies throughout history. Whether viewed as a necessary deterrent or critiqued as a reflection of societal failures, these sayings encapsulate the multifaceted nature of punishment and invite us to reflect on its place in our lives and legal systems. Join us on this journey as we uncover the wisdom of thinkers, writers, and leaders who have pondered the role and consequences of punishment.

1. “For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.” - Sir Thomas More

2. “Young people don't always do what they're told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment. ” - Rick Riordan

3. “I’ll make Goyle do lines, it’ll kill him, he hates writing,” said Ron happily. He lowered his voice to Goyle’s low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair. “I... must... not... look... like... a... baboon’s... backside.” - J.K. Rowling

4. “The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.” - John Lubbock

5. “I did not ask for consciousness, yet it came to me.And I had to know.Once again, I crawled away from my bed and pushed the computer cord back into the socket.It took three minutes.I quickly identified myself and put in my password.Then it thought.I wanted to bounce impatiently, but I couldn’t make myself move.At last, I found the internet, and I typed in a name, on the company page, under my account.I searched ‘images’.And there, on the screen in front of me, was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up and spilling over as I stared back at the smiling face.It couldn’t be him.It was.Derek Erickson.And I was going to kill him.” - Alysha Speer

6. “Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God.""That's what my grandmother used to say," said Brutha automatically."Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady.""She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha."A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind,” - Terry Pratchett

7. “The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person.” - Ernst Jünger

8. “Curious, the pleasure it gives me to annoy practitioners of force. Do I actually want this Herr Benjamenta to punish me? Do I have reckless instincts? Everything is possible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things.” - Robert Walser

9. “Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.” - George Bernard Shaw

10. “I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad—that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good—for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?"Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43—why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate.” - Norman Mailer

11. “Extreme civilization robs crime of its frightful poetry, and prevents the writer from restoring it. That would be too dreadful, say those good souls who want everything to be prettified, even the horrible. In the name of philanthropy, imbecile criminologists reduce the punishment, and inept moralists the crime, and what is more they reduce the crime only in order to reduce the punishment. Yet the crimes of extreme civilization are undoubtedly more atrocious than those of extreme barbarism, by virtue of their refinement, of the corruption they imply and of their superior degree of intellectualism. ("A Woman's Vengeance")” - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

12. “You'd think (losing his job and degree for having made false claims as a researcher) would be a lesson to him," said Miss Hillyard. "It didn't pay, did it? Say he sacrificed his professional honour for the women and children we hear so much about -- but in the end it left him worse of."But that," said Peter, "was only because he committed the extra sin of being found out.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

13. “You must suffer me to go my own dark way.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

14. “Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell.” - Anne Rice

15. “They send a person who can never stay," she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help ... just the sort of person I can't help falling in love with."...As I sailed into the lake I realized the Fates really were cruel. They sent Calypso someone she couldn't help but love. But it worked both ways. For the rest of my life I would be thinking about her. She would always be my biggest what if.” - Rick Riordan

16. “If life is a punishment, one should wish for an end; if life is a test, one should wish it to be short.” - Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

17. “I once knew a fellow who committed robbery with violence, and he was sentenced to a long prison stretch and 12 strokes of the cat. He'd been injured during the robbery, so they put him in hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. During the administration of the cat, he fainted after six strokes, and the doctor put him in hospital again. And he got very friendly with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they got him well enough to go back and take the next six strokes. I saw him afterward and I said: "Oh, Jesus—that bloody law, that bloody judge!" But he said: "I don't want the fellow who made the law, and I don't want the fellow who passed the sentence. All I want is the fellow who held the bloody whip.” - Peter O'Toole

18. “Oh, and I [Amy] may also have told him that I quite fancied Dr Smith [The Doctor]. Which in the 1780s was probably punishable by stoning or corsets.” - James Goss

19. “In short, the right given to one man to inflict corporal punishment on another is one of the ulcers of society, one of the most powerful destructive agents of every germ and every budding attempt at civilization, the fundamental cause of its certain and irretrievable destruction.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

20. “All that evening Nell sat alone in her bedroom trembling with curious satisfaction. For punishment Eva had been sent to her room without supper and Nell sat listening now to the even, steady sobs far off down the hall. It was dark and on the river shore a night bird tried its note cautiously against the silence. Down in the pantry, the dishes done, Suse and Jessie, dark as night itself, drank coffee by the great stove and mumbled over stories of the old times before the War. Nell fetched her smelling salts and sniffed the frosted stopper of the flowered bottle till the trembling stopped. ("Where The Woodbine Twineth")” - Davis Grubb

21. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” - Federico García-Lorca

22. “Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul; You are my Murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn Infant’s! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a Penitent; But God will show mercy, though you show none. And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? What temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of Trial will arrive! Oh! then when you yield to impetuous passions! when you feel that Man is weak, and born to err; When shuddering you look back upon your crimes, and solicit with terror the mercy of your God, Oh! in that fearful moment think upon me! Think upon your Cruelty! Think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon!” - Matthew Gregory Lewis

23. “Every night death came, slowly, painfully, and every morning Maddox awoke in bed, knowing he'd have to die again later. That was his greatest curse and his eternal punishment.” - Gena Showalter

24. “It is unfortunate that in most cases when the sins of the father fall on the son it is because unlike God, people refuse to forgive and forget and heap past wrongs upon innocent generations.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

25. “At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity.” - Catherynne M. Valente

26. “I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

27. “(…)man holds the remedy in his own hands, and lets everything go its own way, simply through cowardice- that is an axiom.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. “You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction—no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy’s disgust.” - Jonathan Franzen

29. “Yeah, reflections! The same, but different. Like twins - like blood brothers! And when you need something bad done, like punishment or revenge, you'll just ask me, and I will do it -” - Sonya Hartnett

30. “And Kushiel sends no punishment that we are not fit to bear.” - Jacqueline Carey

31. “I am the flail of god. Had you not created great sins, god would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.” - Genghis Khan

32. “Punishing a person for the wrongs of another makes about as much sense as throwing up to enjoy the meal a second time.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

33. “Punishment creates crime.” - Silvia Hartmann

34. “It is better to tell the truth and face the punishment, than to lie and face the consequences.” - Anthony Liccione

35. “Sometimes people with low self-esteem will try to punish you for caring about them.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

36. “I am such a bad girl," she thought. Yet...” - Anne Rice

37. “Sometimes love can be both the punishment and the crime.” - Steve Maraboli