“Disgrace does not consist in the punishment, but in the crime.”
Non nella pena,
Nel delitto è la infamia.
Antigone, I, 3; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 148.
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Vittorio Alfieri11
Italian dramatist and poet 1749–1803Related quotes
John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic
Salon interview (2000)
Context: In the old movies, yes, there always was the happy ending and order was restored. As it is in Shakespeare's plays. It's no disgrace to, in the end, restore order. And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous.
Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 70
Context: Justice in no wise consists in meting out to another that exact measure of reward or punishment which we think and decree his merit, or what we call his crime, which is more often merely his error, deserves. The justice of the father is not incompatible with forgiveness by him of the errors and offences of his child. The Infinite Justice of God does not consist in meting out exact measures of punishment for human frailties and sins. We are too apt to erect our own little and narrow notions of what is right and just, into the law of justice, and to insist that God shall adopt that as His law; to measure off something with our own little tape-line, and call it God's law of justice. Continually we seek to ennoble our own ignoble love of revenge and retaliation, by misnaming it justice.
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
1770s, Boston Massacre trial (1770)
Context: It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
James Iredell (1751–1799) one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
July 28, 1788, p. 107.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)
Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist
Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 164.
John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic
Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the Destitute and Criminal Classes (1868).
“The certainty of punishment, even more than its severity, is the preventive of crime.”
Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 456.
Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist
Section V, p. 13
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)