Capital Punishment Quotes » Death Penalty

Potter Stewart

Saqib Ali — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:19:29 +0000

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

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

Saqib Ali — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:19:22 +0000

If the death penalty is to be abolished, let those gentlemen, the murderers, do it first – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

French:

Si l’on veut abolir la peine de mort en ce cas, que MM. les assassins commencent

Source:
Shapiro, F. R. (2006). The Yale book of quotations. (F. R. Shapiro, Ed.) Yale University Press.

George Walker Bush

Saqib Ali — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:02:19 +0000

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 Walker Bush

Mary Wollstonecraft

Saqib Ali — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:11 +0000

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world – Mary Wollstonecraft

Thomas Fuller

Saqib Ali — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:58:23 +0000

Law cannot persuade, where is cannot punish – Thomas Fuller

George Savile

Saqib Ali — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:56:59 +0000

Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen – George Savile

John McAdams

Saqib Ali — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:51:59 +0000

If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call. – John McAdams

Justice Antonin Scalia

Saqib Ali — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:48:51 +0000

There have been Christian opponents of the death penalty just as there have been Christian pacifists, but neither of those positions has even been predominant in the church. Its current predominance is the handiwork of Napoleon, Hegel and Freud rather than of St. Thomas and St. Augustine. – Justice Antonin Scalia

Thomas Szasz

Saqib Ali — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:37:06 +0000

If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order. – Thomas Szasz

Theodore D. Roosevelt

Saqib Ali — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:20:04 +0000

As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment. – Theodore D. Roosevelt