Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ronald Reagan

In case anybody asks you about my position on capital punishment, you can tell them I favor it; and if they want to know why, you can tell them this story.

Spiro T. Agnew

The criminal left belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary.

Tom Tancredo

The word nobody wants to use, but you see if you are here illegally, that's the punishment, deportation.

Thomas Bernhard

I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying.

Thomas Brooks

He that hath deserved hanging may be glad to escape with a whipping.

Victor Hugo

But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.

Vicente Fox

When the day comes that it is time to adopt the alternative of lifting punishment for consumption of drugs, it would have to come all over the world. Humanity some day will see that it is best in that sense.

Vanna Bonta

Penalty is different than punishment, because it offers something with which to regain honor.

Sophocles

Evil gains work their punishment.

Soren Kierkegaard

It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.

Tamora Pierce

Face it," Gary told her kindly. "You'll never catch up. You just do as much as you can and take the punishments without saying anything. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't what they're really trying to teach us--to take plenty and keep our mouths shut.

Tacitus

Every great example of punishment has in it some injustice, but the suffering individual is compensated by the public good.

Steve Allen

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.

Scott Turow

That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.

Sun Tzu

One whose troops repeatedly congregate in small groups here and there, whispering together, has lost the masses. One who frequently grants rewards is in deep distress. One who frequently imposes punishments is in great difficulty. One who is at first excessively brutal and then fears the masses is the pinnacle of stupidity.

Richard Attenborough

I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.

John Paul Stevens

[B]y requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

John Owen

The purpose of our holy and righteous God was to save his church, but their sin could not go unpunished. It was, therefore, necessary that the punishment for that sin be transferred from those who deserved it but could not bear it, to one who did not deserve it but was able to bear it.

John Milton

Back to thy punishment, False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings.

Norbert Wiener

The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

Mitch Albom

She felt worthless and hollow. There was no hope of fixing this. And when hope is gone, time is punishment.

Mitch Albom

When hope is gone, time is punishment.

Theodore Roosevelt

It is not only highly desirable but necessary that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no conscience and will do right only under fear of punishment.

Michelle Alexander

Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns.

Michelle Alexander

The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.

Max Lucado

Christ lived the life we could not live and took the punishment we could not take to offer the hope we cannot resist.

Matthew Henry

Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces.

Matt Taibbi

Obviously, people who commit crimes should be punished. Even people who steal socks and 'Snow White' videos should probably do time if they have priors, especially serious priors. But the punishment has to fit the crime, and the standard has to be the same for everyone.

Meg Cabot

It’s seemed more like a punishment than a reward most days…” he said, his tone one of bitter resignation. Then his gaze lifted to meet mine, and his voice changed. “…at least until I found you.

Marilyn vos Savant

Capital punishment is the source of many an argument, both good and bad.

Martin Scorsese

The only way I was able to defend myself was to be able to take punishment. Then I got a lot of respect. They said, "Oh, he's okay, he can take it. Don't hit him." The guys were pretty big, and I had asthma.

Lance Armstrong

My actions and reactions, and the way I treated certain scenarios, were way out of line, so I deserved some punishment.