Quotes About Capital Punishment

#1. 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

#2. I'm for capital punishment. You've got to execute people. How else are they going to learn?

Mort Sahl

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. Capital punishment ... treats members of the human race ... as objects to be toyed with and discarded.

William J. Brennan

#7. 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.

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment.

Tony Campolo

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.

Alfred De Vigny

#16. Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.

Orrin Hatch

#17. I think capital punishment works great. Every killer you kill never kills again.

Bill Maher

#18. 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

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

Werner Herzog

#20. 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

#21. For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death.

James Frey

#22. Capital punishment could not be justified in any society calling itself civilized.

Howard Zinn

#23. 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

#24. 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

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

Jerry Brown

#26. 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

#27. 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.

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. This country is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It's based on capital punishment.

Kate Millett

#31. 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

#32. We make needless ado about capital punishment,
taking lives, when there is no life to take.

Henry David Thoreau

#33. 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

#34. Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

#35. Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot

Banksy

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder.

Geoffrey Fisher

#40. But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.

Benjamin Tucker

#41. 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

#42. I don't know if the question is whether you believe in capital punishment anymore. I think the greater question is its effectiveness and given the choices we face in California, should we have a merit-based discussion on its effectiveness and costs?

Tani Cantil-Sakauye

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. The prospect of the gallows, too, makes them hardy and bold. Ah, it's a fine thing for the trade! Five of them strung up in a row, and none left to play booty or turn white-livered!

Charles Dickens

#46. 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

#47. I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

James Madison

#48. Jesus is the most famous victim of capital punishment.

James Martin

#49. 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

#50. Supporters of capital punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible punishment.

William J. Clinton

#51. 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

#52. We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again.

Mario Puzo

#53. The serial murderer often seeks the very form of capital punishment that is being held over his head as a deterrent.

Joel Norris

#54. I support capital punishment. But let's be clear: It's a decision for each state to make.

Ted Cruz

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. I've no patience with modern humanitarian scruples about capital punishment.

Agatha Christie

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

Anjem Choudary

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

Jack Kemp

#60. The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?

Bryan Stevenson

#61. Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer. But imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master.

Jesse Jackson

#62. Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.

George Orwell

#63. Abstractions about capital punishment were one thing, but the details of systematically killing someone who is not a threat are completely different.

Bryan Stevenson

#64. Mr. Lundberg: "I asked you for your position on capital punishment."
Student: "Prone.

Kristin Hannah

#65. 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

#66. 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

#67. Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

Henry Ford

#68. 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

#69. Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.

H.L. Mencken

#70. It would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expedience of capital punishment could be founded in a society glorying in its civilization.

Karl Marx

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

Scott Turow

#72. Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.

George Will

#73. 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

#74. [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

#75. 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

#76. Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.

Woody Allen

#77. 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

#78. Capital punishment is the source of many an argument, both good and bad.

Marilyn Vos Savant

#79. 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

#80. I had a dream about you. You were being hung. I had a sword in one hand and a stool in the other. I couldn't decide which one to use, so I stood on the stool and threw myself on the sword. It was the least I could do to protest capital punishment.

Bauvard

#81. 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

#82. 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

#83. 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

#84. 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

#85. 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

#86. 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

#87. 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

#88. The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe
fear and awe of the State.

Edward Abbey

#89. 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

#90. Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society's final assertion that it will not forgive.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#91. As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.

Paul Simon

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

Oliver North

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

Bill O'Reilly

#94. Killing a Jew was an insignificant, legitimate, authorized, and encouraged act that conformed with the directives of the Reich. Protecting a Jew led to capital punishment.

Patrick Desbois

#95. 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

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

Richard Attenborough

#97. I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies.

Lionel Jospin

#98. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

Albert Camus

#99. 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

#100. The murder that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood, remorselessly.

Cesare Beccaria