Quotes about Social Punishment

Mao Zedong

‘Crowning’ the landlords and parading them through the villages. This sort of thing is very common. A tall paper-hat is stuck on the head of one of the local tyrants or evil gentry, bearing the words ‘Local tyrant so-and-so’ or ‘So-and-so of the evil gentry’. He is led by a rope and escorted with big crowds in front and behind. Sometimes brass gongs are beaten and flags waved to attract people's attention. This form of punishment more than any other makes the local tyrants and evil gentry tremble. Anyone who has once been crowned with a tall paper-hat loses face altogether and can never again hold up his head. Hence many of the rich prefer being fined to wearing the tall hat. But wear it they must, if the peasants insist.

Those landlords who had killed peasants were sometimes executed as prior to the Peasant Uprising, there was no law enforcement against landlords in rural areas like Hunan. In 1927 there was a Peasant Uprising in the Hunan Province of China. Young Mau went there and wrote a report. Many years later when Mao was a major revolutionary leader, the landlords were often executed and not just humiliated.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

America is a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive toward its children.

Lois Lowry

For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.

Moby

I'm definitely a fan of public humiliation.

H. L. Mencken

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina.

John Rae

There are, in every society, rules of conduct, and practices of life, which the progress of events has gradually marked out, and general observance hallowed. Of these, some are founded on the principles of morality and religion, some on caprice, some on prejudice. The breaking of any of them is always esteemed a crime against society.

Israel Horovitz

There is no crime greater, or more worthy of punishment, than being strange and frightened among the strange and frightened; except assimilation to the end of becoming strange and frightened, but apart from ones own real self.

Caroline Fraser

Americans are squeamish about anything that seems to punish people for their religious beliefs.

William Shakespeare

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

Monica Lewinsky

Public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry.

Naomi Wolf

Women who are beautiful or who achieve beauty according to the imposed standards are rewarded; those who cannot or choose not to be beautiful are punished, economically and socially.

Michelle Alexander

It's not crime that makes us more punitive in the United States. It's the way we respond to crime and how we view those people who have been labeled criminals.

Monica Lewinsky

Public shaming is a blood sport that has to stop.

Faraj Keifes

We [Druse] are a very conservative society, and we are especially sensitive to the issue of family honor. We are much more strict about this than other Muslims …. With us there is no compromise on this matter I would have preferred that her father had dealt with this matter differently, not by murder. But this woman broke the laws of our community, she crossed dangerous red lines, and she had to know that she would be punished for it

The “law” that the murdered woman had broken was that she had dated a man who although a Muslim was not a Druze. Even in Israel where so called “honor killings” are definitely illegal, amongst some traditional communities there is understanding if not subtle approval. The woman had been killed by her own father and two of her uncles. The Shfaram Duse community actually celebrated the murder.

Social Punishment Quotes