Thane Rosenbaum Quotes

Retributive justice did not arise from any Christian principle; almost every pre-Christian society dealt with wrongdoers by causing them pain.

Life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, wounds equal for equal

Justice is inextricably linked to revenge, which is both morally right and a deeply internalized instinct as innate to man as breathing, having sex, falling in love, and making war.

We seek a restorative justice, not a retributive justice.

Let the punishment match the offense.

Let the punishment fit the crime.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal.

I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No.

When justice is done for symbolic reasons, then all of us are in trouble…. Symbolic justice is not what a verdict should be about.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Executions are not psychological events for the healing of the victims’ families. They are moral events.

A system that will take life must first give justice.

There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.

Every punishment is based, not on logic or the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or to another person…. Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to the pagan gods. “How did they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendants will say about us.

Terrorism does not disappear with revenge tactics but through making justice and equality before law a reality.

A proper criminal justice system exacts justice - that is, punishes criminals for their crimes. Rehabilitation and deterrence are worthy goals, but they are secondary to retribution.

All victims deserve justice.

Today, criminal justice functions and justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to something other than itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems.

There are two forms of justice. There is what is called retributive justice and there is restorative justice.

And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.

Unless we maintain correctional institutions of such character that they create respect for law and government instead of breeding resentment and a desire for revenge, we are meeting lawlessness with stupidity and making a travesty of justice.

Simply coming to the perpetrator and delivering the message is Nozick's definition of revenge. And in that sense, Adi is exacting revenge. When people ask, "Does Adi want revenge?" - they mean violent revenge. But in Nozick's formulation, it is revenge. That is the essence of revenge.

Robert Nozick [a Havard philosopher, famous for his book "Anarchy, State and Utopia"] defined revenge as delivering the message that you know what someone has done, and it doesn't involve hurting them or doing anything to them beyond that. It's just delivering the message that their crime has been noted not just by its victims, because the victim might be dead, but by another who has a different moral view and will challenge the perpetrator's view.

If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.