75 Retributive Justice Quotes

Following is our list of retributive justice quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about restorative justice.

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Famous Retributive Justice Quotes

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness. - Confucius

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness. — Confucius

Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others. — Eric Hoffer

For benefits return benefits; for injuries return justice without any admixture of revenge. — Confucius

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. — Samuel Johnson

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. — Kurt Vonnegut

Swift justice demands more than just swiftness. — Potter Stewart

The source of justice is not vengeance but charity. — Bridget of Sweden

Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion — Frank Herbert

Justice is the firm and continuous desire to render to everyone that which is his due. — Justinian I

The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens. — Miroslav Volf

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. — Albert Camus

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment. — Mahatma Gandhi

Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes. — Cesare Beccaria

Retaliation Quotes

I have no intention of retaliating or looking backwards. We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future. — Jomo Kenyatta

The will to survive is not as important as the will to prevail... the answer to criminal aggression is retaliation. — Jeff Cooper

The only weapon with which the unconscious patient can immediately retaliate upon the incompetent surgeon is hemorrhage. — William Stewart Halsted

Retributive justice quote Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial t
Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.

Without forgiveness life is governed by... an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation. — Roberto Assagioli

Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full. — Sulla

Retributive justice quote Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

If someone throws stones at you, throw back bread. — Filipino Proverbs

There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems. — Edward James Olmos

Unfortunately, the higher you climb in social media, the more people will want to throw stones at you. But don't retaliate publicly. — Lewis Howes

The fundamental problem is that there's no credibility in the judicial system, which is a system that's been completely politicized. This is retaliation and selective repression. — Leopoldo Lopez

Restorative Justice Quotes

I want to make all Europe and America know it - I want to make England feel her weakness if she refuses to give the justice we the Irish require - the restoration of our domestic parliament. — Daniel O'Connell

Let us never cease to feel compassion for those in want. Let us never tire of helping victims of injustice and oppression. He who puts his faith in the restoration of human dignity cannot be wrong. — Poul Hartling

What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. — Paul Hawken

Retributive justice quote There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when w
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights. — Pearl S. Buck

The world is tired of seeing the perpetuation of violence and terrorism, but the effort to create a real peace needs to go hand in hand with the struggle to restore justice. — Mohammad Khatami

It's the latest trendy thinking by the Ministry of Justice... Restorative justice is a fad. — Douglas Carswell

Retributive justice quote If there is no justice for the people, there be no peace for the government.
If there is no justice for the people, there be no peace for the government.

We seek a restorative justice, not a retributive justice. — Desmond Tutu

There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew. — Desmond Tutu

For us, universal values such as justice, morality and peace cannot be disputed and it is for this reason that we pursue the restoration of historical truth. — Robert Kocharian

There are two forms of justice. There is what is called retributive justice and there is restorative justice. — Desmond Tutu

Pursuit Of Justice Quotes

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. — Barry Goldwater

The search for justice and security, the struggle for equality of opportunity, the quest for tolerance and harmony, the pursuit of human dignity - these are moral imperatives which we must work towards and think about on a daily basis. — Aga Khan IV

Retributive justice quote Stand up for what is right even if you stand alone.
Stand up for what is right even if you stand alone.

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison

The pursuit of otherness, the sense that we are somehow different than our brothers and sisters, no matter where we find them, allows for all the other great evils: racism, sexism, homophobia, violence against gay people and against women. — Anna Quindlen

We've got to understand that all disenfranchised people have something in common...The pursuit of justice really is about equality for everyone. — Anita Hill

Retributive justice quote Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence -- these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it. — Albert Einstein

I don't believe in any form of unjustified extremism! But when a man is exercising extremism -- a human being is exercising extremism -- in defense of liberty for human beings it's no vice, and when one is moderate in the pursuit of justice for human beings I say he is a sinner. — Malcolm X

Greatness is telling the truth & being courageous in pursuit of justice. The worst thing you could tell young people is to be successful but become well-adjusted to an unjust status quo as opposed to being great & being maladjusted to an unjust status quo. — Cornel West

Proclaim a theology of divine righteousness which demands justice, respect, tolerance, compassion, inclusiveness, trust in the ultimate efficacy of divine zeal, and the rigorous pursuit of peace in the midst of competing interests and faith claims. — James A. Forbes

Justice And Injustice Quotes

He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust. — Thomas Aquinas

True religion is a revolutionary force: it is an inveterate enemy of oppression, privilege, and injustice. — Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

We must stop constantly fighting for human rights and equal justice in an unjust system, and start building a society where equal rights are an integral part of the design. — Jacque Fresco

Retributive justice quote Do not give up your dreams of a more just world.
Do not give up your dreams of a more just world.

Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation. — Daniel Berrigan

Do not let your heart become troubled by the sad spectacle of human injustice. Even this has its value in the face of all else. And it is from this that one day you will see the justice of God rising with unfailing triumph. — Pio of Pietrelcina

To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. — Thomas Hobbes

Retributive justice quote Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and sh
Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God's world. — Desmond Tutu

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. — John Stuart Mill

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. — Desmond Tutu

People Writing About Retributive Justice

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Confucius

Confucius
quotes on life, aging and education

911 18025
Read quotes by Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer
quotes on leadership, happiness and intelligence

581 4280
Read quotes by Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson
quotes on writing, life and love

1736 7561
Read quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut
quotes on writing, love and war

1005 5935
Read quotes by Potter Stewart

Potter Stewart
quotes on education, culture and slavery

26 301
Read quotes by Bridget of Sweden

Bridget of Sweden

9 465

More Retributive Justice Quotes

If an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death. — Immanuel Kant

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Justice divine Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries. — John Milton

Justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar. — Rod Serling

Our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right for the people they have harmed. [...] Instead, our system of "corrections" is about arm's-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. — Piper Kerman

So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain. — George Eliot

Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting. — Bell Hooks

If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millenia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture. — Avery Dulles

I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No. — Paddy Ashdown

Retributive justice is one that says clobber him or clobber her because they clobbered me. So it emphasizes punishment. — Desmond Tutu

If you don't have properly constituted civic authorities you will encourage vigilantism and solo efforts at retributive justice - which is anarchy, and God doesn't want his world to be anarchic. — N. T. Wright

Forgiveness doesn't diminish justice; it just entrusts it to God. He guarantees the right retribution. — Max Lucado

When poor and ordinary Americans who commit crimes are prosecuted and imprisoned, that is Justice. When the same thing is done to Washington elites, that is Ugly Retribution. — Glenn Greenwald

You cannot do justice to the dead. When we talk about doing justice to the dead we are talking about retribution for the harm done to them. But retribution and justice are two different things. — William Shawcross

[On Senator Jesse Helms] I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will. — Nina Totenberg

RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them. — Ambrose Bierce

Even apart from the image of a truly merciless God that contradicts everything we can assume from what Jesus says about the Either of the lost, can we be surprised at a time when retributive punishments without an opportunity of probation are being increasingly abandoned in education and penal justice, that the idea not only of a lifelong, but even eternal punishment of body and soul, seems to many people absolutely monstrous. — Hans Kung

His laws once broken, His justice and the very nature of those laws bring the immutable retribution; but if we turn penitently to Him, He enables us to bear our punishment with a meek and docile heart, ‘for His mercy endureth forever. — Elizabeth Gaskell

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