Punishment Quotes

“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, White Nights

“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, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“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, The House of the Dead

“Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, The Visitor

“Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel's book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

“And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“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, In the Night Garden

“Face it," Gary told her kindly. "You'll never catch up. You just do as much as you can and take the punishments without saying anything. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't what they're really trying to teach us--to take plenty and keep our mouths shut.”
― Tamora Pierce

“There is not eternal damnation, the only rewards and punishments are right here in this world.”
― Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, The Madman and the Nun: and Other Plays

“The law is that you
must live

in the house you have built.

The law is absurd: it is
written down nowhere.

You are uncertain what crime

is, though each life writhing to
elude what it has made

feels like punishment.”
― Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival: Poems

“[Pope] Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. "The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned and towns deserted. The wrath of the Lord is upon us and He may be intending to destroy the whole of creation. People are without leaders and direction. They want to be given a reason for this, so they can be reassured, so they will return to their prayers and their obiediences. All this is going on, and you are concerned about the safety of two Jews?”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

“All attempts at law, all religion, all ethical norms might be nothing more than attempts by the weak to restrain the strong. Then, within the law, arise the new strong, who subvert the law for their own ends of power and family interest, leaving the old strong outside their circle to pursue the waiting possibilities which they call crime. The weak, the cowardly, the decent ones, live between these groups.”
― George Zebrowski, Brute Orbits

“Today we have to learn all over again that love for the sinner and love for the person who has been harmed are correctly balanced if I punish the sinner in the form that is possible and appropriate. In this respect there was in the past a change of mentality, in which the law and the need for punishment were obscured. Ultimately this also narrowed the concept of law, which in fact is not only just being nice or courteous, but is found in the truth. And another component of the truth is that I must punish the one who has sinned against real love”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times - A Conversation with Peter Seewald

“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, Jakob von Gunten

“I stood behind the man’s chair, my blade at his throat.
“Why do you do it?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer. “Kill people, and blow up buildings, and sell drugs?”
It was what they all did. Committed crimes. That was why I killed them.
“You’re a criminal, a terrorist, a danger. And I have been asked to take you out.” I told him.
I was legend now, yet he asked the same question all the others did.
“What is your name?”
My sensitive ears tuned out the slit as my sword cut his neck.
I walked around the chair to see his face. I watched as his eyes–slowly at first–changed from blue to milky white. His skin went pale.
And as I heard him take his last breath, I ducked in so my lips hovered at his ear, and whispered, “My name, is Sharden.”
― Alysha Speer, Sharden

“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, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

“Y todavía los que no murieron bajo las chozas ni se rajaron los huesos bajo los árboles ni se desangraron bajo las cuevas, ciegos de miedo y de ira acabaron despedazándose entre sí. Los pocos que no sufrieron quebranto, como recuerdo de la simpleza de sus corazones, se transformaron en monos.”
― Popol Vuh

“This book is about getting closer to mass incarceration and extreme punishment in America. It is about how easily we condemn people in this country and the injustice we create when we allow fear, anger, and distance to shape the way we treat the most vulnerable among us. It's also about a dramatic period in our recent history, a period that indelibly marked the lives of millions of Americans--of all races, ages, and sexes--and the American psyche as a whole.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“Por no haber sabido hablar conforme a lo ordenado, tendréis distinto modo de vivir y diversa comida. No viviréis ya en comunión plácida; cada cual huirá de su semejante, temeroso de su inquina y de su hambre, y buscará lugar que oculte su torpeza y su miedo.”
― Popol Vuh

“Hmmm,” you muse out loud. Your voice is deep and carnal, a sound which sends new surges of desire rushing to my sex. “These balls are awfully dusty - if only I knew a little slut who was good at polishing balls…”
― Felicity Brandon, Hide & Seek

“Even he who deserves to die, who deserves to be killed, doesn't deserve to be killed like that.”
― Grégoire Courtois, The Laws of the Skies

“[The archbishop’s court] sentenced him to the loss of his prebend and all other revenues for two years, with the profits to be distributed to the poor at the king’s discretion, to a public whipping in the presence of the judge he had insulted, and possibly to one or two years’ banishment. Henry [II] was outraged by the leniency.”
― Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket

“The last I saw, he was breathing, but we can always hope that the duke shoots him again,” said the doctor cheerfully.”
― Byrd Nash, Delicious Death

“Most of us have been deeply shaped by the false notion that in order for people to behave better they need to feel worse and be punished. In practice, we see that humans are, in fact, far more likely to change in desirable ways when they are more resourced, not less.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

“Instead of appealing to a fear of consequences, community accountability appeals to higher values and aligns self-interest with the collective good. In CI's limited experience, liberatory goals were required to guide the process, since pragmatism could lead to the use of coercion or threatened or real violence as temporary measures for assuring the stability and safety needed to make further steps possible However, the pervasiveness of punishment as a model for accountability and the association of the term "accountability" with retribution contributed to difficulties in moving beyond this mode of engagement. Thus, a practice such as banning, which makes a modicum of safety possible while mobilizing for a more engaged process, can become an end rather than a means. (Mimi Kim)”
― Ejeris Dixon, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”
― Frederich Nietzsche

“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.

Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer.

Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge, Vintage Muggeridge: Religion and Society

“It was a gift to get to be accountable and not a punishment.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

“When the response to mistakes, failures, and misunderstandings is emotional, psychological, economic, and physical punishment, we breed a culture of fear, secrecy, and isolation.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

“*Assignment a link to writeforme.org*
M: You have until 9 p.m. to get this done...
*once account made*... it took me to the link I'd clicked.
It said, "Title," at the very top, and under that, it said, "You will type the line: I will always call miss m by her title." Under that it said, "30 time correctly."
I immediately texted her. *you can't be serious*
"I'm serious. Have fun!"...
I began to type, "I will always call miss m by her tilte."
When I tried to backspace to fix the typo, I wasn't able to, and then I noticed that line didn't count as a line done, but made the count 32 lines instead of 30. If I made a mistake, it started over and added 2 lines each time. I glanced at the clock. It was six-fifteen: I had until nine to get this to her.
Fuck my life, it was going to take the entire time allotted, and I was probably going to be late considering how every fucking time I typed, I fucked u.
My lines were now at 44.”
― M C Stokes