One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts... to my surprise... almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.
A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.
It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.
A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.
The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.
Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.
It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.
