No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary whatever the punishment once a specific crime has appeared for the first time its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments there are consequences.

Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men which to the democratic mind are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.

Men are not punished for their sins but by them.

Marriage resembles a pair of shears so joined that they cannot be separated often moving in opposite directions yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

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

By the fulfillment of my legal and moral duty I think I have earned punishment just as little as the tens of thousands of dutiful German officials who have now been imprisoned only because they carried out their duties.

In places where marriage's core meaning has been altered through legal action officials are beginning to target for punishment those believers and churches that refuse to adapt.

Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude and punishments were barbarous but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions.

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

I have spent a lifetime watching kids make mistakes because they were not trained or well led or properly motivated to do well. I never faulted the kids rather I saw opportunity to train to motivate to improve leadership - not to punish the individual.

Well I certainly have learned and I hope I'm moving on and certainly two years of prison was a terrible punishment.

Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves not only in new colonial outposts but also domestically.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.