Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Admitting wrongdoing and accepting punishment can save a person.
In plain terms
Owning up to mistakes can rescue you.
What can you take from it?
Take responsibility to protect yourself.

Where it applies

  • personal conflict
  • legal situations
  • relationship repair

Putting it to work

  • confession
  • apology
  • restorative justice

Questions to consider

  • When is admission enough without punishment?
  • Can punishment ever be restorative?

Another view

Not all punishments are fair or proportional.

More from Henrik Ibsen

  1. What's to become of the morally sound? Left out in the cold, I suppose. We must heal the sick.

    Permalink to quote #10
  2. I've had the most extraordinary longing to say 'Bloody Hell'!

    Permalink to quote #12
  3. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.

    Permalink to quote #9

Related quotes

  1. Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in pun…

    Margaret FullerMargaret Fuller quote #8
  2. My intellect tells me: 'Tell the truth at any cost.' The Little Man in me says: 'It is stupid to expose oneself to the little man, to put oneself at his mercy.…

    Wilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich quote #49
  3. He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat.

    Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche quote #53