Punishment

Punishment is medicine for the soul: the wrongdoer who escapes it is sicker than the one who submits.

We punish because pain teaches what argument cannot: the person who has not learned virtue by habit may yet learn it by correction.

Sin deserves suffering, and God's eternal punishment is no cruelty but the unflinching consequence of a will that chose against the Good.

Punishment serves justice first and reform second: the penalty restores the order that sin has broken, and may also heal the sinner.

Punishment is an evil inflicted by sovereign authority for the sole purpose of bending the will toward future obedience.

In nature every person may punish a transgressor of natural law; in civil society that right passes to the magistrate, who punishes to deter, reform, and repair.

The severity of punishment marks the distance between liberty and despotism: moderate penalties preserve freedom, while excessive ones destroy it.

Punishment is a categorical imperative: the criminal must receive what he deserves, regardless of any benefit to society, because to punish for utility is to use a person as a mere means.

Crime negates right; punishment negates the negation, and in this double movement the criminal's own rationality is honored.

The desire to punish is natural, but only utility can determine when that desire should be indulged: punishment is justified solely by its consequences.