"As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."
-- Oscar Wilde
I am not completely convinced by Wilde here -- often his turn of phrase is better than his substance -- but the quotation certainly makes one stop and think.
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4
416 225 2777
www.jmortonmusings.blogspot.com
1 comment:
Certainly does make one think.
I read in the "Social Animal" that the threat of extreme punishment actually increases the levels of crime we see in our communities. Seems wierd. Perhaps old Oscar was right.(And hey...that guy did a presentation on Esthetics here in Woodstock Ontario at the Oxford Hotel in the late 1890's after his time at Reading Gaol for his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas)
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