#punishment

Wilson had been killed by everybody. It was this that made his death special, the children had been told. It was justice, it was all the people showing how much they hated this crime. Killing was justice when everybody joined in. ↗

— Barry Unsworth

#community #justice #punishment #death

Two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death. ↗

— Dostoevsky

#death

Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong. She knew from experience that she would quickly have to ingratiate herself with her new masters to avoid being rejected or, in more dire cases, punished. Then there would be the phase where she would have to sharpen her senses in order to see and hear as acutely as possible so that she could assimilate quickly all the new customs and the words most frequently used by the group she was to become a part of--so that finally, she would be judged on her own merits. ↗

— Laura Esquivel

#exclusion #immigration #judgement #punishment #slavery

No matter how limited their powers of reason might have been. still they must have understood that living like that was just murder, a capital crime - except it was slow, day-by-day murder. The government (or humanity) could not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time. To kill one man - that is, to subtract 50 years from the sum of all human lives - that was a crime; but to subtract from the sum of all human lives 50,000,000 years - that was not a crime! No, really, isn't it funny? This problem in moral math could be solved in half a minute by any ten-year-old Number today, but they couldn't solve it. All their Kant's together couldn't solve it (because it never occurred to one of their Kant's to construct a system of scientific ethics - that is, one based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication). ↗

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

#death #philosophy #death

Life [had] replaced logic. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#life-of-meaning #raskolnikov #resurrection #life

Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#failure #john-steinbeck #morality #punishment #strength

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent. ↗

— Emily Dickinson

#chastisement #merit #punishment #talent

There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital. ↗

— Jerzy Kosinski

#must #nation #punishment #than #totalitarian

They have shrunk from inquiry, though they have strained after punishment. I have in every shape dared the one, that I might, so far as lay in my power, be able to secure the other. ↗

— Joseph Howe

#after #dared #every #far #i

I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies. ↗

— Lionel Jospin

#capital punishment #democracies #i #like #punishment