"If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?"

"It is folly to punish your neighbour by fire when you live next door."

"Christ says, "Do not resist evil." The sole object of courts of law is – to resist evil. Christ enjoins us to return good for evil. Courts of law return evil for evil. Christ says, "Make no distinction between the just and the unjust." Courts of law do nothing else. Christ says, "Forgive all. Forgive not once, not seven times, but forgive without end." "Love your enemies." "Do good to those who hate you." Courts of law do not forgive, but they punish; they do not do good, but evil, to those whom they call the enemies of society. So, the true sense of the doctrine is that Christ forbids all courts of law."

"A person has done evil, so another person, or a group of people, in order to fight this evil, cannot think of anything better than to create another evil, which they call punishment."

"Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to the pagan gods. “How did they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendants will say about us."

"The strongest proof that in the name of “science” we pursue unworthy and sometimes even harmful things is the existence of a science of punishment."

"A community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than … by the occasional occurrence of crime."

"The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute."

"See they suffer death, But in their deaths remember they are men, Strain not the laws to make their tortures grievous."

"Let them stew in their own grease (or juice)."

"Frieth in his own grease."

"Noxiæ pœna par esto."

"Diis proximus ille est Quem ratio non ira movet: qui factor rependens Consilio punire potest."

"I stew all night in my own grease."

"Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

"'Tis I that call, remember Milo's end, Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend."

"That is the bitterest of all, to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing."