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
Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?
Anton Chekhov
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
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
Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.
GEORGE ORWELL
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Henry Ford
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
Woody Allen
The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder
Geoffrey Fisher
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
Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.
Katharine Fullerton Gerould
The killing of a criminal can be moral — but never its legitimation.
Walter Benjamin