Let wickedness escape, as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Political leader, Revolutionary, Novelist, Poet, Critic
Never was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution.
—Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) Irish-born Literary, Art Critic
Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author
Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the former.
—Horace Mann (1796–1859) American Educator, Politician, Educationalist
We will not punish a man because he hath offended, but that he may offend no more; nor does punishment ever look to the past, but to the future; for it is not the result of passion, but that the same thing may be guarded against in time to come.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
When God punishes a land, he deprives it leaders of wisdom.
—Italian Proverb
If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender.
—John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician
Faults of the head are punished in this world; those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so is their punishment.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation.
—Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009) French Social Anthropologist, Philosopher
Wickedness, when properly punished, is disgraceful only to the offender; unpunished, it is disgraceful to the whole community.
—Charles Simmons (1924–2017) American Editor, Novelist
As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
—Samuel Butler
In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault (1926–84) French Philosopher, Critic, Historian
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.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
The very worst use to which you can put a man, says Wilkes, is to hang him; but the hanging is not to make the man useful, but to punish his crime and protect society.
—Charles Simmons (1924–2017) American Editor, Novelist
The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary; they must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
—William Gilmore Simms (1806–70) American Poet, Historian, Novelist, Editor
We do not aim to correct the man we hang; we correct and warn others by him.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall—think of it, always.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Even legal punishments lose all appearance of justice, when too strictly inflicted on men compelled by the last extremity of distress to incur them.
—Junius Unidentified English Writer
Punishment is lame, but it comes.
—George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh Anglican Poet, Orator, Clergyman
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 (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
The exposition of future punishment in God’s word is not to be regarded as a threat, but as a merciful declaration.—If in the ocean of life, over which we are bound to eternity, there are these rocks and shoals, it is no cruelty to chart them down; it is an eminent and prominent mercy.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar