#retribution

Somewhere deep inside, his humanity had been shaken by something so unnatural, so foreign in its essence, his very being withdrew from it... ↗

— Tamara Rose Blodgett

#retribution #zombies #death

Mark Spitz had met plenty of the divine-retribution folks over the months. This was their moment; they were umbrella salesmen standing outside a subway entrance in a downpour. The human race deserved the plague, we brought it on ourselves for poisoning the planet, for the Death of God, the calculated brutalities of the global economic system, for driving primordial species to extinction: the entire collapse of values as evidenced by everything from nuclear fission to reality television to alternate side of the street parking. Mark Spitz could only endure these harangues for a minute or two before he split. It was boring.The plague was the plague. You were wearing galoshes, or you weren't. ↗

— Colson Whitehead

#blame #devine-retribution #zombies #death

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments." [On Water] ↗

— Guy de Maupassant

#government #people #punishment #retribution #revolts

Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#retribution #forgiveness

But men often mistake killing and revenge for justice. They seldom have the stomach for justice. ↗

— Robert Jordan

#retribution #revenge #men

My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die! ↗

— William Goldman

#revenge #die

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#guilt #kindness #retribution #guilt

Laws on killing, even God's demands, didn't allow for peace. Not always. There'd still be pain; missing that child would break her parents' hearts. But what Helen knew, what she'd seen in those woods, would be too much for them, for everybody. ↗

— Alan Heathcock

#justice-without-mercy #loss-of-faith #retribution #revenge #the-big-peace

To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution. ↗

— Louis D. Brandeis

#bring #commit #conviction #crimes #criminal