Andrew Coyle Bradley Quotes

'Reversible Errors' is about the limits of the law to define who committed ultimate evil, to define what ultimate evil is, to allow the million arbitrary factors to make this a meaningful punishment, and finally to say, 'Are we really accomplishing what we wanted to accomplish? Are those anxieties relieved?' I don't think so.

In life and art, there are distinctions to be made between what an act of cruelty consists of.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

No pain equals that of an injury inflicted under the pretense of just punishment.

Barjawan was my slave and I employed him. He acted in good faith, and I treated him favourably. Then he misbehaved, so I killed him.

As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.

Death - by hanging! - that, at least, I did not deserve. The death part - all right, somebody has to stand for the responsibility. But that - that I did not deserve!

He does not deserve this. He has done many things, not all good, but he does not deserve this. And he never did get his priest.

A writer without a sense of justice or injustice would be better off editing the yearbook for a school for exceptional children.

Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.

It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.

Someone will have to pay for the innocent blood that they shed every day.

A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way; they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.

Revenge feels right only to those directly involved. Justice feels right even to outsiders.

Not only is this not love; I think it is the most diabolical unfairness that was ever taught or devised.

The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil - doers, only adds to the evil in the world.

It is a most just punishment, that man should lose that freedom, which man could not use, yet had power to keep, if he would; and that he who had knowledge to do what was right, and did not should be deprived of the knowledge of what was right; and that he who would not do righteously, when he had the power, should lose the power to do it, when he had the will.

It is hardly a moral act to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure.

It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.

As it turned out, though, it was a lot easier to say that someone deserved to die for what they did than it was to take the responsibility to make that happen.

Ireland, Ireland. That cloud in the west, that coming storm. That minister of God's retribution upon cruel, inveterate, and but half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social and great religious questions. God grant that we may have courage to look them in the face!

You're punishing him over and over for things that are out of his control.

It went on yesterday and it's going on tonight, somewhere there's somebody ain't treatin' somebody right.

He who wrongs the innocent must bear the fruit of his act, like dust flung against the wind.