Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human II

On the history of the moral sensations

70 Execution. – How is it that every execution offends us more than a murder? It is the coldness of the judges, the scrupulous preparation, the insight that here a human being is being used as a means of deterring others. For it is not the guilt that is being punished, even when it exists: this lies in educators, parents, environment, in 1:1s, not in the murderer – I mean the circumstances that caused him to become one.