Top 100 Quotes About Death Penalty
#1. Put to death? I thought God was supposed to be all about forgiveness, not the death penalty.
Jessica Verdi
#2. Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate.
Margaret Cho
#3. One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England.
Glenn T. Seaborg
#4. The death penalty exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives and human decency. Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them while draining millions of dollars from more promising efforts to restore safety to our lives.
Robert M. Morgenthau
#5. The system is not perfect. Until it's perfect, let's do away with the death penalty.
Kinky Friedman
#6. 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
#7. I have inquired for most of my adult life about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent. And I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.
Janet Reno
#8. I'm very glad that [the death penalty] hasn't existed for many years in the U.K.
Hilary Swank
#9. But I'm not pro death penalty. I - I'm just anti the notion that it is not a matter for democratic choice, that it has been taken away from the democratic choice of the people by a provision of the Constitution.
Antonin Scalia
#10. People who change their religion should face the death penalty.
Zakir Naik
#11. California's death penalty is ... an incredibly costly penalty, and the money would be better spent keeping kids in school, keeping teachers and counselors in their schools and giving the juvenile justice system the resources it needs.
Gil Garcetti
#12. May the death penalty, an unworthy punishment still used in some countries, be abolished throughout the world.
Pope John Paul II
#13. 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
#14. We're also the only country that has the Death Penalty. That's something to boast about, isn't it?
Tony Randall
#15. Reagan's Drugs Czar, Carlton Turner, said that kids deserved to die as a punishment for smoking poisoned weed, to teach them a lesson. Two years later, he called for the death penalty for all drug users. On
Shaun Attwood
#16. If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers.
Alphonse Karr
#17. The death penalty? Give me a break. It's easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.
Antonin Scalia
#18. The death penalty is inhumane ... whether that person is in a [jail] or it's bin Laden.
Danny Glover
#19. 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 Naik
#20. I don't believe in the death penalty. I believe that there are other people as we speak right now in prison, wrongfully accused, who could serve such a fate. That is injustice at its greatest.
Hilary Swank
#21. 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
#22. To exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected by the prospect of the death penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law.
Byron White
#23. Life is indeed precious and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm that fact.
Edward I. Koch
#24. 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
#25. Petty theft, murder, forgery, arson, and the abduction of women were all capital offenses, so the death penalty for heresy was neither unusual nor extreme.50
Karen Armstrong
#26. It's very rare that someone gets the death penalty for charges of conspiracy, for his influence, for his Svengali-Rasputin act.
Raymond Pettibon
#27. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option.
Anonymous
#28. The movement to abolish the death penalty needs the religious community because the heart of religion is about compassion, human rights, and the indivisible dignity of each human person made in the image of God.
Helen Prejean
#29. 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
#30. My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.
Andrew Cuomo
#31. Paris Hilton got 45 days in jail. A lot of people were upset about this - they were hoping for the death penalty.
Jay Leno
#32. More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty.
Jerry Weller
#33. After Chernobyl, thousands and thousands of people, if not millions, were given a death penalty and had to pay the price, our father among them.
Wladimir Klitschko
#34. You know, the Bible is so clear. Go to Genesis chapter nine and you will find the death penalty clearly stated in Genesis chapter nine ... God ordains the death penalty!
Rafael Cruz
#35. The death penalty costs too much. Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons. (p. 197)
Helen Prejean
#36. For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
Albert Camus
#37. Now let me get this straight. Bush is anti-abortion, but pro-death penalty. I guess it's all in the timing, huh?
Dennis Miller
#38. States kill when they apply the death penalty, when they send their people to war, or when they carry out extra-judicial or summary executions. They can also kill by omission, when they fail to guarantee to their people access to the bare essentials for life.
Pope Francis
#39. Only in America can you be Pro-Death Penalty, Pro-War, Pro-Unmanned Drone Bombs, Pro-Nuclear Weapons, Pro-Guns, Pro-Torture, Pro-Land Mines, AND still call yourself 'Pro-Life.'
John Fugelsang
#40. 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
#41. It is time for conservatives to do what they do best and insist that a wasteful, inefficient government program gets off the books. Small government and the death penalty don't go together.
Christy Clark
#42. The death penalty symbolizes whom we fear and don't fear, whom we care about and whose lives are not valid.
Bryan Stevenson
#43. 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
#44. Those of us who spent time in the agricultural sector and in the heartland, we understand how unfair the death penalty is.
George W. Bush
#46. [Conservative talk radio hosts] have conned the American people into thinking there is such a thing as a pro-life, pro-war, pro-gun, pro-death penalty Christian.
Janeane Garofalo
#47. I haven't committed all the crimes in my movies, I would have gotten the death penalty many years ago if I had.
John Waters
#48. Our law is a Jordanian law that we inherited, which applies to both the West Bank and Gaza, and sets the death penalty for those who sell land to Israelis.
Yasser Arafat
#49. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust our legal system
Neil Gaiman
#50. This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot. I understand the emotionality of death penalty cases.
George W. Bush
#51. If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.
Jimmy Carter
#52. the death penalty, and the sooner the better.
John Grisham
#54. The death penalty is reserved for people who do not
Paul Simon
#55. The government considers the aborting of innocent unborn children a natural right. Yet, there is widespread debate still about whether the death penalty for convicted murderers is "cruel and unusual punishment."
Joseph Farah
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#59. In ten Muslim countries you can get the death penalty just for being gay. If they were chopping the heads off of gay people in the Vatican, wouldn't there be a greater outcry among liberals?
Bill Maher
#60. No study has brought out any solid evidence that the death penalty deters crime. In fact, Amnesty reports that 'the murder rate in states which use the death penalty is twice that of states which do not, according to FBI statistics.
Antoinette Bosco
#61. Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights.
Hafez Ibrahim
#62. 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
#63. 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
#65. Sharia is the most oppressive system on earth. It encourages people to lie, if it's for the benefits of Islam. It doesn't allow Muslims to leave Islam, and there's a death penalty in all the schools of Sharia against those that leave Islam. Sharia defines what jihad is.
Mark Durie
#66. The death penalty is becoming a way of life in this country.
Dennis Miller
#67. 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
#68. I want to accelerate, not slow down, the enforcement of the death penalty in Florida.
Jeb Bush
#69. I think [the death penalty is] very expensive, and the delays are inordinate, delaying closure for the victims' families.
Rob McKenna
#70. My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.
Steve Earle
#71. 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
#72. 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 White
#73. do you believe
in the
death penalty?"
he asked her.
"you mean being
sober?"
she laughed.
Christopher Poindexter
#74. In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.
Joseph Stalin
#75. I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.
Eric Holder
#76. The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates.
John McLaughlin
#77. 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
#78. Remember, the death penalty is murder.
Robert Drew
#79. Society may protect itself without putting a human to death as it would a wild animal. Since we believe each person has a soul, and is capable of achieving salvation, life in prison is now an alternative to the death penalty.
Richard Viguerie
#80. You know who doesn't get the death penalty? Crazy people. That's a defense in America. My client's crazy. He doesn't know what he did. Fine, then he doesn't know we're gonna kill him. If a guy's that retard, you put him the electric chair and tell him it's a ride.
Bobby Slayton
#81. I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.
George Ryan
#82. It should be clear that the death penalty does just the opposite of promoting decency and respect for life. It dehumanizes people and promotes murder. It can never be applied fairly.
John Morrison
#83. He committed the crime of stupidity while under my command," said Citizen.
"Oh my," said Rigg. "They're handing out the death penalty for that these days?
Orson Scott Card
#84. The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, and the appeals process is expensive and cruel to the surviving family members.
Martin O'Malley
#85. We have abolished the death penalty for humans, so why should it continue for animals?
Brigitte Bardot
#86. Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.
Eliot Spitzer
#87. We have a legal system, and we have a penal code. We have the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and people should respect this.
Adel Al-Jubeir
#88. I don't want to put one innocent person to death to put 99 that are guilty to death. So philosophically I'm a tooth-for-tooth guy, but the reality is the death penalty as public policy is flawed.
Gary Johnson
#89. 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
#90. I think life is sacred, whether it's abortion or the death penalty.
Tim Kaine
#91. I'm pro-death penalty, but what I have not seen is anybody that would mock someone on death row.
Gary Bauer
#92. McVeigh's lawyer got him the death penalty, which, quite frankly, I could have done.
Jon Stewart
#93. If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millenia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture.
Avery Dulles
#94. Sometimes I can tackle an issue -homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty - and wrap a good story around it. These are the best books, the ones with a story and a message.
John Grisham
#96. My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.
Steve Earle
#97. There has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent ... It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty.
Jimmy Carter
#98. 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
#99. The racial terrorism of lynchings in many ways created the modern death penalty. America's embrace of speedy executions was, in part, an attempt to redirect the violent energies of lynching while ensuring white southerners that Black men would still pay the ultimate price.
Bryan Stevenson
#100. They're going to get the death penalty. They'll be strung up and made to be laughed at out in the streets and made examples of!
Brad McKinniss
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