Capital Punishment quotes:

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I think capital punishment works great. Every killer you kill never kills again. -- Bill Maher
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. -- Henry Ford
Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life. -- Orrin Hatch
As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death. -- Paul Simon
What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party. -- Ida B. Wells
Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society. -- Clint Eastwood
Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally. -- Charlize Theron
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders. -- Albert Camus
I have come to think that capital punishment should be abolished. -- Jack Kemp
The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation. -- Walter Benjamin
Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job. -- George Orwell
The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder. -- Geoffrey Fisher
Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master. -- Jesse Jackson
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime. -- Woody Allen
Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory. -- Benjamin Tucker
The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics. -- Bryan Stevenson
At the end of the day, perhaps the best argument against capital punishment may be that it is an issue beyond the limited capacity of government to get things right. -- Scott Turow
I don't think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don't think that's right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives. -- George W. Bush
What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder? -- Albert Camus
I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated. -- John Paul Stevens
[Jurors who are opposed to capital punishment are] more likely to believe that a defendant's failure to testify is indicative of his guilt, more hostile to the insanity defense, more mistrustful of defense attorneys and less concerned about the danger of erroneous convictions. -- Thurgood Marshall
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
This country is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It's based on capital punishment. -- Kate Millett
Capital punishment is the source of many an argument, both good and bad. -- Marilyn vos Savant
I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life. -- Richard Attenborough
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder. -- Benjamin Tucker
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment. -- James Madison
I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment. -- Tony Campolo
I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment. -- Werner Herzog
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
Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.' -- Jeff Lindsay
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
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
Suicide is possible, but not probable; hanging, I trust, is even more unlikely; for I hope that, by the time I die, my countrymen will have become civilised enough to abolish capital punishment. -- Laurence Housman
If the executioner goes, my package will never be made public. If he doesn't go, it will be made public exactly fifty years from the day the bill for a moratorium on capital punishment is defeated. -- Caryl Chessman
One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts... to my surprise... almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias. -- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
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
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
There's only one reason to be crucified under the Roman Empire, and that is for treason or sedition. Crucifixion, we have to understand, was not actually a form of capital punishment for Rome. In fact, it was often the case that the criminal would be killed first and then crucified. -- Reza Aslan
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices. -- Teju Cole
There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess. -- A. S. Byatt
I favor capital punishment. It saves lives. -- Nancy Reagan
Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot -- Banksy
Capital punishment in my view achieved nothing except revenge. -- Albert Pierrepoint
Capital punihsment: That without the Capital get the punishment. -- John Spenkelink
I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies. -- Lionel Jospin
Banning capital punishment takes us to a higher state of consciousness. -- Jerry Brown
Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment. -- Anjem Choudary
There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital. -- Jerzy Kosinski
That led me to say that when push comes to shove, I'm against capital punishment. -- Scott Turow
I support capital punishment. But let's be clear: It's a decision for each state to make. -- Ted Cruz
I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn? -- Mort Sahl
I think capital punishment's day is done in this country. I don't think it's fairly applied. -- Oliver North
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take. -- Henry David Thoreau
Capital punishment...treats members of the human race...as objects to be toyed with and discarded. -- William J. Brennan
Supporters of capital punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible punishment. -- William J. Clinton
Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order. -- George Will
The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men. -- Alfred de Vigny
The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State. -- Edward Abbey
Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give. -- Katharine Fullerton Gerould
We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again. -- Mario Puzo
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
My wife runs the charity Reprieve, and so rendition, droning, and capital punishment are very much the topics of our dinner table because of that. -- Nick Harkaway
I support the death penalty because I believe, if administered swiftly and justly, capital punishment is a deterrent against future violence and will save other innocent lives. -- George W. Bush
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
I am in favour of capital punishment if the execution of the sentence is immediate. The purpose of the death penalty is to send out a message to society. -- Ujjwal Nikam
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
Real power does not consist in the ability to inflict capital punishment upon the subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I want to think that there are better ways of obviating murder than to resort to capital punishment, but I realise that this may be wishful thinking on my part. -- Torbjorn Tannsjo
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 law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime--for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold. -- Marquis de Sade
If we could do away with death, we wouldn't object; to do away with capital punishment will be more difficult. Were that to happen, we would reinstate it from time to time. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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
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
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

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