William J. Brennan Jr. Quotes

Human beings are made up of many different values, and sometimes those values are in tension with each other.

The idea of cultural relativism is nothing but an excuse to violate human rights.

The death penalty has always been fraught with racial bias…. I cannot understand how people can find pleasure in, or believe that civilized values are served by, the killing of another human being.

There is a strong religious commitment to the sanctity of human life, but, paradoxically, some of the most fervent protectors of microscopic stem cells are the most ardent proponents of the death penalty.

The death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are truly guilty of such crimes erase their sacred dignity as human beings and their intrinsic right to life?

I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity.

I know something about killing. I don't like killing. And I don't think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing.

Capital punishment...treats members of the human race...as objects to be toyed with and discarded.

Inside Laila too a battle was being waged : guilt on one side, partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction that what she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had been natural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by the knowledge that they might never see each other again.

The death penalty makes us all murderers.

Can the state, which represents the whole of society and has the duty of protecting society, fulfill that duty by lowering itself to the level of the murderer, and treating him as he treated others? The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process.

Those subject to capital punishment are real human beings, with their own backgrounds and narratives. By contrast, those whose lives are or might be saved by virtue of capital punishment are mere 'statistical people.' They are both nameless and faceless, and their deaths are far less likely to be considered in moral deliberations.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.

With respect to the death penalty, I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That day will be a great day for our country, for it will be a great day for our Constitution.

It's not easy to shed the idea that human life is sacred.

No practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us.

The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.

The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come face-to-face with that. If we're not willing to face up to the cruelty, we ought not to be doing it.

The Golden Rule reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development. This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty.

At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man...is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.

No principle is worth the sacrifice of a single human being.

Every human life is precious in God's sight and no effort should be spared in the attempt to promote throughout the world a genuine respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of individuals and peoples everywhere.

It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right.

Any country if you go really, really in depth somewhere, the human rights are not totally respected.

I felt I had a responsibility to do the right thing. And then I wanted to do the right thing by my family and there was no handbook.