Death Penalty Quotes - Page 2

You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.

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.

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

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.

Can the state, which represents the whole of society and has the duty of protecting society, fulfill that duty by lowering itself to the level of the murderer, and treating him as he treated others? The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process.

I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing!

God in His law requires the death penalty for homosexuals.

For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

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.

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.

Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty... mine's putting in an express lane.

It's very rare that someone gets the death penalty for charges of conspiracy, for his influence, for his Svengali-Rasputin act.

McVeigh's lawyer got him the death penalty, which, quite frankly, I could have done.

The death penalty experiment has failed.

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

Given the irreversibility of the death penalty, the possibility of a wrongful conviction can never be overstated.

Sometimes you just have the thin the herd.

Now let me get this straight. Bush is anti-abortion, but pro-death penalty. I guess it's all in the timing, huh?