punishment

The death penalty is not about vengeance or deterrence. It is about justice. It is a measure of a nations's civility and moral backbone that it rewards and punishes in due measure for great deeds and heinous crimes. So, along with Nobel prizes for great accomplishments, humans must also be brave enough and morally confident enough to exact severe penalties for those who commit the worst deed known to humankind: murder.

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

Let the punishment match the offense.

Will corporal punishment help restrain criminal behavior? Some well-intentioned experts say no. But one group that disagrees with these experts is the criminals themselves. Criminals know that punishment works, and they use it every day all over America. Criminals demand absolute obedience, and if corporal punishment doesn't work, then they will use capital punishment, for they know that the fear of death is the best deterrent for disobedience. Even the experts tell us that when being attacked by a criminal, obey him- because to resist may bring even more punishment. So does punishment work? It sure does. The problem is the wrong people are being punished

He who, seeking his own happiness, punishes or kills beings who also long for happiness, will not find happiness after his death.

I think capital punishment works great. Every killer you kill never kills again.

Alcohol is like anything else. It's only as bad as the person it's being poured into. If it's used to heighten an occasion, or to take an edge off stress, I don't see a problem. Trouble starts when you either lose control and let the bottle run you, or when you believe its promises of immortality. You realize that no matter how much you punish yourself, you always seem to wake up the next day. Pretty soon you're convinced that you will never die. When that happens I guess it is time to look for help before your life becomes one long, lost weekend.

Christ believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

It was his Fourth Concerto, the last work he had written. The crash of its opening chords swept the sights of the streets away from her mind. The Concerto was a great cry of rebellion. It was a 'NO' flung at some vast process of torture, a denial of suffering, a denial that held the agony of the struggle to break free. The sounds were like a voice saying: There is no necessity for pain - why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity? - we who hold the love and the secret of joy, to what punishment have we been sentenced for it, and by whom? . . . The sounds of torture became defiance, the statement of agony became a hymn to a distant vision for whose sake anything was worth enduring, even this. It was the song of rebellion - and of a desperate quest.

If that's the price of getting together, then I'll be damned if I want to live on the same earth with any human beings! If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? Nothing can make self-immolation proper. Nothing can give them the right to turn men into sacrificial animals. Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability. If that is right, then we'd better start slaughtering one another, because there isn't any right at all in the world!