Punitive Justice Quotes

There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.

The law does not content itself with classifying and punishing crime. It invents crime.

There is no such thing as justice, all the best that we can hope for is revenge.

What does fighting crime mean, exactly? Does it mean upholding the law when a woman shoplifts to feed her children, or does it mean struggling to uncover the ones who, quite legally, have brought about her poverty?

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

Retributive justice is one that says clobber him or clobber her because they clobbered me. So it emphasizes punishment.

A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?

I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.

Our justice system is a punitive one that's there to sort of deal with what happens after someone's already offended.

If, as is contended by the advocates of “deterrence,” cruelty in punishment is justified by the “deterrent” effect which these persons credit it with, then surely the rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrew are the last word of penal wisdom. If hanging and the plank-bed are “deterrent” and hence justifiable, then … the stake and the rack are more “deterrent” and hence more justifiable.

Therefore the elect shall go forth... to see the torments of the impious, seeing which they will not be grieved, but will be satiated with joy at the sight of the unutterable calamity of the impious.

RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.

The blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them.

I do not believe that God has imposed suffering upon anyone to punish them or to teach them a lesson.

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

The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.

God is a being who gives everything but punishment in over measure.

To me it seems as plain as can be that the Bible declares that all the wicked will God destroy; again, that those who, during the Millennial age when brought to a knowledge of the truth, shall prove willful sinners will be punished with everlasting destruction.

There's this whole sense of judgment and who's right and who's wrong and who's moral and who's going to be punished.

He’s bound to have done something,” Nobby repeated. In this he was echoing the Patrician’s view of crime and punishment. If there was a crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done.

In my first meeting with somebody, I kind of say, "What are your expectations?" And there are some people who say, "I just want to be fair," so then we have to qualify what that means. But when somebody comes in and says, "I just want to nail him. I just want to exact as much punishment as I possibly can." Well, that might be a case where I say, "We may not be the right firm for you."

For the security of particular men, and, by consequence for the common peace, it is necessary that the right of using the Sword for punishment, be transferred to some Man or Counsel, that Man or Counsel is necessarily understood by Right to have the supreme Power in the City.

Anger requires that the offender should not only be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong which has been done by him.

When I first started writing comics, in the way-back days, Typhoid Mary was my explosive response to women characters in comics - I made her an innocent virginal type, a clever, dark, liberated woman, and as Bloody Mary, a feminist bent of punishing men - all in one character. She was an instinctual rather than a calculated creation.