Richard Cohen Quotes

I even opposed the death penalty for the man who killed my brother .

Justice should not admit a public's thirst for pure revenge.

there is no glory in punishing

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.'

I don't believe in vengeance. Really, when all is said and done, I probably don't believe in punishment.

Public emergencies may require the hand of severity to fall heavily on those who are not personally guilty, but compassion prompts, and ever urges to milder methods.

The state is not the agent of mercy or charity, but is the instrument of God's vengeance against those who disturb the public peace through theft, violence, or negligence. To the state belongs the power of the sword, which consists of the right to execute those who are worthy of death, to inflict corporal punishment, and to require restitution to the victims of theft and bodily injury.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

I don't believe in the death penalty, but I understand personal vengeance.

There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.

I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I believe in two eyes for an eye.

Just vengeance does not call for punishment.

To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than the products of justice.

Punishment should have a redemptive quality to it.

The abolition of death penalty would give more opportunities for pastoral work with those who have stumbled and for the latter to repent. It is also evident that punishment by death cannot be reformatory; it also makes misjudgement irreparable

Let me remember, when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there is likewise a pity due to the country.

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.

As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses... An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation.

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.

I don't wish jail on nobody, not even my worst enemies.

And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?

Instead of a man of peace and love, I have become a man of violence and revenge.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

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