Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
Woody Allen
Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.
GEORGE ORWELL
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
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
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
But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.
Benjamin Tucker
The long and distressing controversy over capital punishment is very unfair to anyone meditating murder
Geoffrey Fisher
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
Woody Allen
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Henry Ford
CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat. _Capital Punishment_, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons --including all the assassins --entertain grave misgivings.
Ambrose Bierce
Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.
Katharine Fullerton Gerould
The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment--or at least much handicap--to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.
Michael Parenti
Capital Punishment, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons - including all the assassins - entertain grave misgivings
Ambrose Bierce
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Henry Ford
To me, capital punishment is a form of societal self-defense. It should not be employed indiscriminately, but in cases of the most heinous crimes, the death penalty may be the only appropriate punishment. Some people believe it is right to take a life to save the life of someone else, but they would not vote to take the life of a convicted criminal, no matter how horrible the crime. Others believe that killing another person for any reason is simply wrong. I respect those opinions, but I disagree with them. I'm convinced that government has a duty to promote community defense. The death penalty, when applied in appropriate cases, can be a strong deterrent to crime. It is certainly a deterrent to the convicted criminal sentenced to death, and it is also a deterrent to other potential capital offenders.
John David Ashcroft