Douglas Preston Quotes

Punishment is justice for the unjust.

They shall suffer for this. They shall suffer for this.

They want to do the right thing, most people. For that little core that doesn't want to do the right thing and gets away with it routinely, most people want to see them get a good whupping. And I am your girl.

Let the punishment fit the crime.

Thyself shall see the act; For, as thou urgest justice, be assured Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desir'st.

So perish all who do the like again.

On wrongs swift vengeance waits.

I guess if life were fair, people who led decent lives would be rewarded, and people who led indecent lives would not be rewarded.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Nobody does good to men with impunity.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

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

Let the punishment fit the crime. Noxiae poena par esto.

There is no injustice without justice coming after, just as there is no night not followed by day.

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.

… vengeance is seldom justice.

There is no justice if wrongdoers go unpunished and victims do not feel avenged.

There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.

Let the punishment match the offense.

Those who offend us are generally punished for the offence they give; but we so frequently miss the satisfaction of knowing that we are avenged !.

The only thing that we have earned at the hands of perfect justice is perfect punishment.

Though punishment be slow, still it comes.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

If religion is a reaction of man, and nothing more, it seems to me that it represents a human desire for wrongdoers to be punished. I hate the idea of Idi Amin living in Saudi Arabia for the last 25 years of his life. That galls me to no end. I feel some sort of need for biblical atonement, or justice, or something. I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen. My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. 'I want to believe there's a heaven. But I can't not believe there's a hell.'