Capital Punishment Quotes - Page 4

• I believe that inside many Americans lies certain uneasiness about capital punishment.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Lying, Believe, Punishment

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• I think capital punishment's day is done in this country. I don't think it's fairly applied.

  Oliver North

  Country, Thinking, Punishment

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• That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment.

  Scott Turow

  Punishment, Death Penalty

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• 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

  Law, Punishment, India

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• 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

  Years, Punishment, Justice

  Thurgood Marshall (2001). “Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences”, Chicago Review Press

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• I'm disappointed that my own Catholic Church has decided that capital punishment is wrong. Which is pretty hypocritical if you think about it, because they wouldn't even have a religion if it wasn't for capital punishment.

  Stephen Colbert

  Thinking, Punishment, Catholic

  "Ice cream? Immigration? 12 ways Colbert kept truthiness alive" by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, www.today.com. April 10, 2014.

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• I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.

  Richard Attenborough

  Punishment, Has Beens

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about - nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I don't want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern - legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.

  Ian Mckellen

  Atheist, Gay, Impact

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• One area of law more than any other besmirches the constitutional vision of human dignity. . . . The barbaric death penalty violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its obligation to respect dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by< emulating his murderer. Capital punishment's fatal flaw is that it treats people as objects to be toyed with and discarded. . . . One day the Court will outlaw the death penalty. Permanently.

  William J. Brennan

  Law, Punishment, People

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• Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Punishment, Unjust, Administration

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• Of all parties I now see only one party- The Anarchist- which respects human life, and loudly insists upon the abolition of capital punishment, prison torture and punishment of man by man altogether.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Party, Men, Prison

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• I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.

  Werner Herzog

  Country, Punishment, Citizens

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• We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Life, Dwelling Place, Cells

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• Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment.

  Anjem Choudary

  Punishment, Messages, Insult

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• Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia, the Islamic law, is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, ‘Whoever insults a Prophet, kill him.’

  Anjem Choudary

  Islamic, Punishment, Law

  "Anjem Choudary says woman who organised Muhammed cartoon contest should face death penalty under Sharia Law" by Christopher Bucktin, www.mirror.co.uk. May 7, 2015.

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• Any assassination is an assassination. It's cold, it's terrible. I'm against any capital punishment. Only the Lord has the right to take away life because he's the giver of life. And assassination stands against democracy, against civilization, against a civilized life of people. Alas, the situation in Lebanon is very chaotic and many innocent people lost their lives because they have a state within a state, an army within an army and the respect for life is not high enough.

  Shimon Peres

  Army, Punishment, Civilization

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• To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Humanity, Rope, Degradation

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.118

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• The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?

  Roger Ebert

  Halfway There, Punishment, Ideas

  Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007”, p.516, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.

  Rebecca West

  Book, Artist, Punishment

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• Banning capital punishment takes us to a higher state of consciousness.

  Jerry Brown

  Punishment, Consciousness, States

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• Bertrand Russell used to employ the method of "evidence against interest"; in other words of deciding that a critique of capital punishment, say, carried more weight if it came from a prison governor. (My friend John O'Sullivan puts it like this: If the pope says he believes in God, he's only doing his job; if he says he doesn't believe in God, he may be on to something.)

  Christopher Hitchens

  Jobs, Believe, Punishment

  "What Sharon Did" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. January 5, 2006.

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• 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

  Grandchildren, Punishment, Achievement

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• Ninety countries still hold on to capital punishment, and, sadly, one of these is the United States, the only Western industrialized country to practice this barbaric punishment.

  Antoinette Bosco

  Country, Practice, Punishment

  Antoinette Bosco (2001). “Choosing Mercy: A Mother of Murder Victims Pleads to End the Death Penalty”

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• We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.

  Potter Stewart

  Taken, Punishment, Murder

  Potter Stewart's expression of the majority opinion in 7-2 ruling that the death penalty is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment for premeditated murder, July 2, 1976.

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• Capital punishment, that thing scares me, it really does. I was talking to my friend about the electric chair, and he starts freakin' out. He's like 'the electric chair? That's too good for these people. That's too good for them'. Alright, how do we make the electric chair worse? How about this? They have to pedal a car battery to their own head. Is that ok? Is that enough, Mr. Hitler?

  Dave Attell

  Talking, Punishment, Car

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