quotes about Death Penalty
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Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.
-- Alan Parker -
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.
-- Albert Camus -
Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.
-- Angela Davis -
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It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.
-- Anthony Kennedy -
I wonder if these death penalty proponents would still hold that it's worth some risk of error if it were their loved one who was murdered by the state, though innocent.
-- Antoinette Bosco -
For where did Dante take the material of his hell but from our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process... Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering.
-- Ban Ki-moon -
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In all religions, we make a choice about what we emphasize, and I choose to come down on the side of a loving God.
-- Bernice KingSource : Bernice King (1999). “Hard Questions, Heart Answers”, p.45, Harmony
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The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.
-- Bianca Jagger -
I don't think there's any question that someday somebody who is innocent will be executed in this country again.
-- Bill McCollum -
The attorney general doesn't favor one method or the other, he favors the death penalty.
-- Bob Butterworth -
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The death penalty symbolizes whom we fear and don't fear, whom we care about and whose lives are not valid.
-- Bryan Stevenson -
Everyone is calm and collected but I am telling you something - I am not calm and I am not collected. It's a sick world out there.
-- Clive Stafford Smith -
My overriding belief is that it is always possible for criminals to improve and that by its very finality the death penalty contradicts this.
-- Dalai Lama -
The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life.
-- Desmond Tutu -
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To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.
-- Desmond Tutu -
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
-- Desmond Tutu -
I have evolved to where I don't think the death penalty is effective.
-- Evelyn Lundberg Stratton -
I'm pro-death penalty, but what I have not seen is anybody that would mock someone on death row.
-- Gary Bauer -
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Given the irreversibility of the death penalty, the possibility of a wrongful conviction can never be overstated
-- George GasconSource : "S.F's district attorney on the death penalty" by George Gascon, www.sfgate.com. April 30, 2011.
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We need to acknowledge that the death penalty is broken beyond repair.
-- George Gascon -
I am haunted by the demon of error - error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.
-- George Ryan -
Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
-- George RyanSource : "Illinois Death Row Emptied". www.washingtonpost.com. January 12, 2003.
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If Moses is our lawgiver [Old Testament prophet given laws by God] at this time let us obey him, not in part only, but wholly, and put every Sabbath breaker, blasphemer, and adulterer to death.
-- Gerald Heaney -
I was a supporter and believer in the death penalty, but I've begun to see that this system doesn't work and it isn't functional. It costs an obscene amount of money.
-- Gil Garcetti -
The costs can't be borne by smaller counties particularly, so if the crime occurs in a large county you might be charged with the death penalty, in a smaller county you're not. That raises some significant questions about fairness.
-- Greg Zoeller -
Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights.
-- Hafez Ibrahim -
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The death penalty experiment has failed.
-- Harry A. BlackmunSource : "Bruce Edwin Callins v. James A. Collins 510 U.S. 1141". The U.S. Supreme Court case No. 93-7054, www.law.cornell.edu. February 22, 1994.
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From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. ... I fell morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.
-- Harry A. Blackmun -
Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?
-- Helen PrejeanSource : Twitter post from Aug 10, 2017
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Government ... can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.
-- Helen Prejean -
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I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.
-- Jack Kemp -
I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.
-- Jack Kevorkian -
I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt.
-- Janet Reno -
Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life.
-- Jay Sekulow -
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From the moment you are in that cell, when they tell you you're going ot be electrocuted, you contemplate it all the time. It never leaves your mind, and they never let it leave your mind.
-- Jay Smith -
The death penalty serves no one. It doesn't serve the victims. It doesn't serve prevention. It's truly all about retribution....There comes a time when you have to ask if a penalty that is so permanent can be available in such an imperfect system. The only guarantee against executing the innocent is to do away with the death penalty.
-- Jeanne Woodford -
When you're talking about death, you can't afford to make even one mistake.
-- Jim Petro -
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Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment.
-- John Spenkelink -
McVeigh's lawyer got him the death penalty, which, quite frankly, I could have done.
-- Jon Stewart -
We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: It offers the tragic illusiion that we can defend life by taking life.
-- Joseph Fiorenza -
As a Christian, as an individual, as a doctor, I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty.
-- Joycelyn Elders -
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For justice to have any meaning, it must also mean that no innocent person should ever be executed...
-- Kathleen Parker -
I don't think there's any words in the English language to explain what it's -what it's like to- to sit on Texas death row and your thoughts are laying on that gurney, convicted but innocent and being put to death.
-- Kerry Max Cook -
It is an expensive government program with the power to kill people.
-- L. Brent Bozell, Jr. -
If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving.
-- Lawrence Lessig -
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Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate.
-- Margaret Cho -
I believe that no one should be executed, guilty or innocent. There are appropriate sanctions that protect society and punish wrongdoers without forcing us to stoop to the level of the least among us at his or her worst moment.
-- Mike Farrell -
You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.
-- N. T. Wright -
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The death sentence is a barbaric act . . . It is a reflection of the animal instinct still in human beings.
-- Nelson Mandela -
The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.
-- Noam Chomsky -
I think the death penalty's easier than life in prison,
-- Pamela Smart -
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First of all, it does not deter crime, the death penalty.
-- Patricia Cornwell -
I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgment had been demonstrated.
-- Paul Jacob -
I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.
-- Primo Levi -
God in His law requires the death penalty for homosexuals.
-- R.J. Rushdoony -
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A humane and generous concern for every individual, his health and his fulfillment, will do more to soothe the savage heart than the fear of state-inflicted death, which chiefly serves to remind us how close we remain to the jungle.
-- Ramsey ClarkSource : Ramsey Clark (1971). “Crime in America”
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The death penalty doesn't need your assent to continue ... it needs your indifference.
-- Ray Krone -
It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.
-- Remy de Gourmont -
I support the death penalty and will continue to do that.
-- Rick Santorum -
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I think [the death penalty is] very expensive, and the delays are inordinate, delaying closure for the victims' families.
-- Rob McKenna -
At some point in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say: Enough.
-- Rod Dreher -
People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.
-- Ruth Bader Ginsburg -
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Eliminating the death penalty...will not hinder the prosecutorial capacity to seek, or the court's ability to impose, 'life without parole' sentences for serious, heinous crimes and criminals.
-- Scott Harshbarger -
That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.
-- Scott Turow -
I Don't Want To Live Long. I Would Rather Get The Death Penalty Than Spend The Rest Of My Life In Prison
-- Theodore Kaczynski -
The fanatic has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.
-- Thomas Bailey Aldrich -
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I believe that the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent to violent crime...period.
-- Troy King -
I stood up to the liberal elite when they came to our state (Alabama) and tried to eliminate the death penalty, we won, they lost.
-- Troy King -
What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing!
-- Victor Hugo -
Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.
-- William J. Brennan -
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Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
-- Woody Allen -
People who change their religion should face the death penalty.
-- Zakir Naik -
If a Muslim becomes a non-Muslim and propagates his/her new religion, then it is as good as treason. There is a Death Penalty in Islam for such a person.
-- Zakir NaikSource : "Zakir Naik's incendiary words" by Tehmina Kazi, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2010.
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There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again.
-- Dinesh D'Souza -
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I would say that there are a lot of people who currently disagree with the death penalty, I just hope that it's never one of their family members that is killed, because then they will probably change their mind on capital punishment.
-- John CabelloSource : Source: www.teenink.com
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If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.
-- Sandra Day O'Connor -
Remember the death penalty is murder.
-- Robert DrewSource : Robert Drew's last words before the execution by injection in Texas, August 2, 1994.
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In Texas, we have the death penalty, and we use it. That's right. If you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back.
-- Ron WhiteSource : Ron White (2007). “I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability”, p.170, Penguin
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It's not about whether you are innocent or guilty. It's about whether or not you can prove you're innocent. If you can't prove you're innocent, then you're considered guilty. It's been flipped: Now it's guilty until proven innocent.
-- Ronald Jones -
If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call.
-- John C. McAdams