Quotes about Restitution

Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.

Today I atone for the mistakes of my past.

We'll buy back our own harm with what is most dear to us.

Hittite law emphasized restitution rather than revenge. Humankind lost a certain useful practicality when it chose the other Semitic response—never to forgive and never to forget.

Never say that I have taken it, only that I have given it back.

Restitution costs: "He shall restore it in full, and shall add a fifth to it." Restitution costs twenty percent according to Leviticus. Guilt requires not simply equity and an even balance, but gift beyond affront. It requires surplus compensation. Such a rule is both economically shrewd and psychologically sound. Israel is required to move beyond grudging restoration, until it is "pressed down and running over.

But isn't the core of forgiveness that the debt is paid? You don't owe the offended anymore.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

I added up all the money the church paid me for the first 25 years and gave it all back.

According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another.

Never say that I have taken it, only that I have given it back.