“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”

Source: The Last Day of a Condemned Man

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Victor Hugo 308
French poet, novelist, and dramatist 1802–1885

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“I want you to understand me.

This isn’t vengeance.

This is punishment.”

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“We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our Air Force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that vengeance is inevitable.”

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“Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin; he is bound to destroy sin.
The only vengeance worth having on sin
is to make the sinner himself its executioner.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

From ‘’Justice’’ in Unspoken Sermons Series III (1889)
Context: If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus.

Alexandre Dumas photo

“And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude… I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.”

Chapter 30 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_30
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

“Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.”

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Source: Modes and Morals (1920), Ch. 7

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the tomb. He never threatened to punish the dead; and there is not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi, containing the slightest intimation that God will take his revenge in another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the doctrine of eternal pain.”

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Some Reasons Why (1881)
Context: My great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have been commanded by God. All these cruelties ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the tomb. He never threatened to punish the dead; and there is not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi, containing the slightest intimation that God will take his revenge in another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the doctrine of eternal pain. The teacher of universal benevolence rent the veil between time and eternity, and fixed the horrified gaze of man upon the lurid gulf of hell. Within the breast of non-resistance coiled the worm that never dies. Compared with this, the doctrine of slavery, the wars of extermination, the curses, the punishments of the Old Testament were all merciful and just.

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“She who sows vengeance must reap its bloody fruit.”

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“Vengeance must end somewhere, and what better place to stop than at the prince?”

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“Nothing optional -- from homosexuality to adultery -- is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishment) have a repressed desire to participate.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

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