Top 100 Quotes About The Death Penalty
#1. 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
#2. the death penalty, and the sooner the better.
John Grisham
#3. The death penalty is reserved for people who do not
Paul Simon
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights.
Hafez Ibrahim
#10. 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
#11. 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
#13. The death penalty is becoming a way of life in this country.
Dennis Miller
#14. 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
#15. I want to accelerate, not slow down, the enforcement of the death penalty in Florida.
Jeb Bush
#16. I think [the death penalty is] very expensive, and the delays are inordinate, delaying closure for the victims' families.
Rob McKenna
#17. My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.
Steve Earle
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.
Eric Holder
#22. 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
#23. I think life is sacred, whether it's abortion or the death penalty.
Tim Kaine
#24. McVeigh's lawyer got him the death penalty, which, quite frankly, I could have done.
Jon Stewart
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. We have abolished the death penalty for humans, so why should it continue for animals?
Brigitte Bardot
#36. The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, and the appeals process is expensive and cruel to the surviving family members.
Martin O'Malley
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.
George Ryan
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. Remember, the death penalty is murder.
Robert Drew
#43. 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
#44. Put to death? I thought God was supposed to be all about forgiveness, not the death penalty.
Jessica Verdi
#45. 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
#46. 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
#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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. The death penalty symbolizes whom we fear and don't fear, whom we care about and whose lives are not valid.
Bryan Stevenson
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. Paris Hilton got 45 days in jail. A lot of people were upset about this - they were hoping for the death penalty.
Jay Leno
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. It's very rare that someone gets the death penalty for charges of conspiracy, for his influence, for his Svengali-Rasputin act.
Raymond Pettibon
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. Life is indeed precious and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm that fact.
Edward I. Koch
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. The death penalty is inhumane ... whether that person is in a [jail] or it's bin Laden.
Danny Glover
#71. 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
#72. If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers.
Alphonse Karr
#73. 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
#74. We're also the only country that has the Death Penalty. That's something to boast about, isn't it?
Tony Randall
#75. 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
#76. May the death penalty, an unworthy punishment still used in some countries, be abolished throughout the world.
Pope John Paul II
#77. People who change their religion should face the death penalty.
Zakir Naik
#78. I'm very glad that [the death penalty] hasn't existed for many years in the U.K.
Hilary Swank
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. The system is not perfect. Until it's perfect, let's do away with the death penalty.
Kinky Friedman
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate.
Margaret Cho
#85. As a Christian, as an individual, as a doctor, I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty.
Joycelyn Elders
#86. Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty ... mine's putting in an express lane.
Ron White
#87. I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgment had been demonstrated.
Paul Jacob
#88. I am pleased that I am able to stand here today and say with a pure heart and meaningful heart that I am against the death penalty. There is no purpose that it serves except to further the damage that death has already done.
Mamie Till
#89. [Sen. John] Kerry is also a man who opposes the death penalty, wants to restrict access to guns and voted against the resolution approving the start of ground operations against Saddam Hussein in 1991 - just what you would expect from Ted Kennedy's partner and Michael Dukakis's running mate.
David S. Broder
#90. Standing alone among great democratic nations in imposing the death penalty is another moral decision that Americansare being forced to confront.
Jimmy Carter
#91. I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice, 2) Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure.
Albert Einstein
#92. I can't talk politics with my cousin because he's such a hypocrite. He's against the death penalty and he hanged himself.
Anthony Jeselnik
#93. I believe that the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent to violent crime ... period.
Troy King
#94. As a member of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I voted 12 times to establish the death penalty in New York ... I regret my votes in favor of the death penalty.
John R. Dunne
#95. It's absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may - may mean with regard to future things, such as death by injection or the electric chair, it's clear that - that the death penalty, in and of itself, is not considered cruel and unusual punishment.
Antonin Scalia
#96. You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.
N. T. Wright
#97. We as the Church need to express wherever appropriate and wherever possible our stance against the death penalty. We need to talk about it. A lot of people don't feel comfortable in doing this but I think we need to, as the Pope says, preach the whole gospel of life.
Gabino Zavala
#98. I believe [ ... ] 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 the legal system.
Neil Gaiman
#99. If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility.
Antonin Scalia
#100. We may be indifferent to the death penalty and not declare ourselves either way so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But when we do, the shock is violent, and we are compelled to choose sides, for or against ... Death belongs to God alone.
Victor Hugo
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