A Quote by Oliver Goldsmith

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.

Oliver Goldsmith

Quote Topics

Familiar Formidable Making Punishment Work

Quote Author

Oliver Goldsmith
Irish - Novelist
November 10, 1730 - April 4, 1774

No matter what his crimes were, Alton Sterling did not deserve to be executed for them. Look, guys, the punishment for resisting arrest shouldn't be death. The punishment for selling bootleg CDs shouldn't be death. The punishment for having a gun in an open-carry state shouldn't be death. The punishment for being a black man shouldn't be death.

Larry Wilmore

In today's integrated world economy, ... eradicating poverty may contribute as much to U.S. security as eradicating terrorism.

Lester R. Brown

The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature -were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The laws only can determine the punishment of crimes, and the authority of making penal laws can only reside with the legislator, who represents the whole society united by the social compact.

Cesare Beccaria

As governor, I came to believe that the death penalty would be a just punishment for certain, especially heinous crimes, such as the murder of a child or the murder of a police officer. The events of September 11 convinced me that terrorists also deserve the ultimate punishment.

Howard Dean

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

Hannah Arendt

We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.

Potter Stewart

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Some heinous crimes justify the ultimate punishment.

Barack Obama

Sins may be forgiven. Crimes require punishment.

George R. R. Martin

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment

Cesare Beccaria

I'm not intimidated by embracing a familiar form and what's familiar about it and making it my own. It is, I think, one of my gifts.

Alan Menken

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

Hannah Arendt

It doesn't make any difference if you are in favor of capital punishment or if you are opposed to capital punishment. The fact of the matter is that as a viable penalty, capital punishment does not work at this time and has not worked in the State of Florida for many, many years.

Gerald Kogan

In the Goldstone Report, Israeli perpetrators of possible crimes against humanity were made subject to prosecution and punishment, although the geopolitical leverage of the United States within the UN prevents implementation. At the same time, several African leaders are being prosecuted for their crimes against humanity and participation in genocide: a double standard of sorts, given the impunity accorded to the West and Israel.