Albert Camus Punishment Quotations

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

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

A fate is not a punishment.

There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.