If your buttocks burn, you know you have done wrong.
—African Proverb
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
Next to the prosperity of a good person, I am best pleased with the confusion of a rascal.
—Unknown
Hanging is too good for him said Mr. Cruelty.
—John Bunyan (1628–88) English Puritan Writer, Preacher
The object of punishment is three fold: for just retribution; for the protection of society; for the reformation of the offender.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
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
Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.
—E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British Politician, Political leader
The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
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
Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
When God punishes a land, he deprives it leaders of wisdom.
—Italian Proverb
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
He must have known me if he had seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognize me by my face.
—Anthony Trollope (1815–82) English Novelist
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
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
There is no greater punishment than that of being abandoned to one’s self.
—Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719) French Jansenist Theologian
We do not aim to correct the man we hang; we correct and warn others by him.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
One should not lift the rod against our enemies upon the private information of another.
—The Hitopadesha Indian Collection of Fables
It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.
—Pierre Corneille (1606–84) French Poet, Dramatist
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
The public has more interest in the punishment of an injury than the one who receives it.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
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
I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
The certainty of punishment, even more than its severity, is the preventive of crime.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
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
Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves?
—Diogenes Laertius (f.3rd Century CE) Biographer of the Greek Philosophers
Punishment is lame, but it comes.
—George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh Anglican Poet, Orator, Clergyman