No Capital Punishment Famous Quotes & Sayings
70 No Capital Punishment Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
In case anybody asks you about my position on capital punishment, you can tell them I favor it; and if they want to know why, you can tell them this story.— Ronald Reagan
The event caused a certain amount of ribaldry and a fair number of sentences depriving men of their grog for playing the God-damned fool, an offense that came under Article Thirty-six 'All other crimes not capital, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, or for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea,' also known as the captain's cloak or cover-all.— Patrick O'Brian
Does capital punishment tend to the security of the people? By no means. It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them; and it renders life insecure, inasmuch as the law holds out that property is of greater value than life.— Elizabeth Fry
Just days after the alleged rape, Florida newspapers were calling for capital punishment of the Groveland Boys. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Visual Materials from the NAACP Records)— Gilbert King
The government (or humanity) would not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time.— Yevgeny Zamyatin
Isaac Newton was being called on to defend to quality of moneys as master of the Royal Mint. He had to face the problem of the debasement of the currency through the practice of shaving some of the silver off silver coins to make more coins (an easy way to make money, when you think about it). Convicted coin-clippers were publicly hung at Tyburn - offences against God were to be forgiven, but offences against capital and mammon deserved capital punishment!— David Harvey
But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, 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.— Albert Camus
When in Gregg v. Georgia the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to capital punishment, this endorsement was premised on the promise that capital punishment would be administered with fairness and justice. Instead, the promise has become a cruel and empty mockery. If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue.— Thurgood Marshall
The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right.— Scott Turow
Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.— Katharine Fullerton Gerould
If someone were to say that life at hard labor is as painful as death and therefore equally cruel, I should reply that, taking all the unhappy moments of perpetual slavery together, it is perhaps even more painful, but these moments are spread out over a lifetime, and capital punishment exercises all its power in an instant.— Cesare Beccaria
The faith I was finding was jagged and more difficult. It wasn't about abstract theological debates: Does God exist? Are sin and salvation predestined? Or even about political/ideological ones: Is capital punishment a sin? Is there a scriptural foundation for accepting homosexuality? It was about action. Taste and see, the Bible said, and I did.— Sara Miles
As an American I wanted to explore ... why are we the only first world country that still has capital punishment? Is it because we're too afraid to really examine the system, or is it because we really truly believe that this is the best way to deter future crime?— Jodi Picoult
Capital punishment? It makes no sense as a policy: It's not a deterrent, and economically it's a disaster. It's very clear that there are innocent people on death row. And if I put an innocent person to death, that's murder.— Tony Goldwyn
If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.— Anton Chekhov
I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counterespionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment.— Aldrich Ames
As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.— Paul Simon
There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.— Jerzy Kosinski
It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?— Victor Hugo
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war ... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.— H.L. Mencken
The murder that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood, remorselessly.— Cesare Beccaria
It doesn't make any difference if you are in favor of capital punishment or if you are opposed to capital punishment. The fact of the matter is that as a viable penalty, capital punishment does not work at this time and has not worked in the State of Florida for many, many years.— Gerald Kogan
Even if it were within her legal right and authority, it would harm more than help. It might be argued that it is like capital punishment today: the state has the right to use it if necessary, but since it is no longer necessary, it would do more public harm than good in the current war against the culture of death.— Peter Kreeft
I don't have an issue with whether - from a legal standpoint, with whether or not government can impose the ultimate punishment on people. We do it in capital cases. Police officers shoot fleeing felons.— Trey Gowdy
If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.— Steve Allen
I don't agree with capital punishment as it is now, because too often mistakes are made. But I think that if you eliminate the mistakes, then there are times when it is justified.— Jeff Lindsay
Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment.— John Spenkelink
I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.— Benjamin Tucker
Like cellulite creams or hair-loss tonics, capital punishment is one of those panaceas that isn't. Only it costs a whole lot more.— Anna Quindlen
So it's okay to kill if your intentions are pure?" "Hasn't that always been the case?" Eliot takes a swig of his beer and flops back on the sofa. "Revenge. Capital punishment. Euthanasia. War.— Judd Trichter
A civilized society looks with horror upon the abuse and torture of children or adults. Even where capital punishment is practiced, the aim is to implement it as mercifully as possible. Are we to believe then that a holy God-our heavenly Father-is less just than the courts of men?— Sidney Hatch
The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.— Anton Chekhov
Jesus is the most famous victim of capital punishment.— James Martin
Mr. Lundberg: "I asked you for your position on capital punishment."— Kristin Hannah
Student: "Prone.
Centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.— Werner Herzog
I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?— Mort Sahl
For each man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not die— Oscar Wilde
he does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace
nor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his face
nor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty space
He does not sit with silent men who watch him night and day
Who watch him when he tries to weep and when he tries to pray
Who watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey
Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed?— Woody Allen
Abstractions about capital punishment were one thing, but the details of systematically killing someone who is not a threat are completely different.— Bryan Stevenson
Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish: it can only add a second atrocity to the original one.— Auberon Waugh
Besides the pain in my gut, why shouldn't I laugh? I've almost escaped death in a foreign country.— S.A. Tawks
It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect.— William S. Burroughs
The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person.— Ernst Junger
No matter how limited their powers of reason might have been. still they must have understood that living like that was just murder, a capital crime - except it was slow, day-by-day murder. The government (or humanity) could not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time. To kill one man - that is, to subtract 50 years from the sum of all human lives - that was a crime; but to subtract from the sum of all human lives 50,000,000 years - that was not a crime! No, really, isn't it funny? This problem in moral math could be solved in half a minute by any ten-year-old Number today, but they couldn't solve it. All their Kant's together couldn't solve it (because it never occurred to one of their Kant's to construct a system of scientific ethics - that is, one based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication).— Yevgeny Zamyatin
There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.— Friedrich Nietzsche
History of the Jews (Johnson, Paul) - Your Highlight on page 34 | Location 758-759 | Added on Thursday, March 5, 2015 9:59:47 PM in the Mosaic law no property offence is capital. Human life is too sacred where the rights of property alone are violated. It also repudiates vicarious punishment:— Anonymous
I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.— Jack Kemp
It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree ... I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.— Albert Pierrepoint
Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it.— George Bernard Shaw
Why do we want to kill all the broken people?— Bryan Stevenson
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.— Benjamin Tucker
You look at the crime and you look at the criminal. If it's a dope dealer who guns down an undercover narcotics officer, then he gets the gas. If it's a drifter who rapes a three-year-old girl, drowns her by holding her little head in a mudhole, then throws her body off a bridge, then you take his life and thank god he's gone. If it's an escaped convict who breaks into a farmhouse late at night and beats and tortures an elderly couple before burning them with their house, then you strap him in a chair, hook up a few wires, pray for his soul, and pull the switch. And if it's two dopeheads who gang-rape a ten-year-old girl and kick her with pointed-toe cowboy boots until her jaws break, then you happily, merrily, thankfully, gleefully lock them in a gas chamber and listen to them squeal. It's very simple. Their crimes were barbaric. Death is too good for them, much too good.— John Grisham
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.— Woody Allen
Plea Against the Death Penalty— Victor Hugo
Look, examine, reflect. You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that "thou shalt not kill"? By killing.
I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is (sadly) called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed.
My own view on capital punishment is that it is morally justified, but that the government is often so inept and corrupt that innocent people might die as a result. Thus, I personally oppose capital punishment.— Ed Crane
Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one whokills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?— Anton Chekhov
The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927- there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgement has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.— Katherine Anne Porter
On March 1, 1907, New Jersey passed a law authorizing execution by electrocution, thus becoming only the third state in the nation to adopt electrocution as its form of capital punishment. Until that time, most states hanged condemned prisoners. Carl Adams, the founder of Adams Electric in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, built this electric chair, known as "Old Sparkey.— Mark W. Falzini
It is significant that, as innocent babies are killed, and capital punishment is withheld from their murderers, the same men who plead for the murderer's life also demand the "right" to abortion. Usually, the same picketers that carry a sign one day, "Abolish Capital Punishment," also carry "Legalize Abortion" another day. When this is called to their attention, their answer is, "There is no contradiction involved." They are right: the thesis is "condemn the innocent and free the guilty.— Rousas John Rushdoony
It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.— Maimonides
Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.— George Will
Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.— Orrin Hatch
The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors— P. J. O'Rourke
psychology, sociology, women's studies
to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view.
I've no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment.— Agatha Christie
We make needless ado about capital punishment,— Henry David Thoreau
taking lives, when there is no life to take.
The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment ... It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society.— Thurgood Marshall
But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all - but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now - this very instant - your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man - and that this is certain, certain!— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The national laws of the five regions of India prescribe no cangue, beatings or prison. Those who are guilty are fined in accordance with the degree of the offence committed. There is no capital punishment.— Hyecho
But now inquiry is being made concerning these issues. First, can any believer enlist in the military? Second, can any soldier, even those of the rank and file or lesser grades who neither engage in pagan sacrifices nor capital punishment, be admitted into the church? No on both counts.— Tertullian
Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting not only on behalf of society, but also on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family.— Dennis Prager
