“For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism … In general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.””

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 38-39

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and l…" by Georg Brandes?
Georg Brandes photo
Georg Brandes 40
Danish literature critic and scholar 1842–1927

Related quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Cesare Beccaria photo
Kim Il-sung photo

“If a man who professes to be a communist punishes an innocent person by labelling him a reactionary, he's no longer a communist, but the worst of criminals.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

With the century, vol. 3

Jacques Monod photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Matthew Stover photo
James Anthony Froude photo

“Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent was shot instead of him.”

James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

"On the Uses of a Landed Gentry" address in Edinburgh (6 November 1876), published in Short Studies on Great Subjects, Vol. III (1893), p. 406
Context: The landlord may become a direct oppressor. He may care nothing for the people, and have no object but to squeeze the most that he can out of them fairly or unfairly. The Russian government has been called despotism tempered with assassination. In Ireland landlordism was tempered by assassination.
Unfortunately the wrong man was generally assassinated. The true criminal was an absentee, and his agent was shot instead of him. A noble lord living in England, two of whose agents had lost their lives already in his service, ordered the next to post a notice in his Barony that he intended to persevere in what he was doing, and if the tenants thought they would intimidate him by shooting his agents, they would find themselves mistaken.

Catherine the Great photo
Charles Dickens photo
Muhammad photo

Related topics