James G. Frazer Quotes

Barbarism is not the inheritance of our pre-history. It is the companion that dogs our every step.

I have purposely presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written'… It evolves in the minds of a thinking community.

The killing of a criminal can be moral, but never its legitimation.

A people who are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination--require that the public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of civilized life have nothing else to rest on.

And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accused by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.

Fight to preserve these traits of civilization, that made us go forward.

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.

The blood of criminals fertilises the soil of liberty.

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.

I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose.

The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.

We cannot but think there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle's theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals.

In the final analysis, the progress of our civilization will be retarded if any large body of citizens falls behind. Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.

Hang him, swaggering rascal!

The more you look at the death penalty, that's where you see that we're actually not killing the worst of the worst. We're killing the poorest of the poor. Where actually one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed is how many resources they have to defend themselves.

Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it.

In case anybody asks you about my position on capital punishment, you can tell them I favor it.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society.

We shouldn't have all these campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they'd been hanged. They'd have been forgotten and the whole community would be satisfied.

Our emotions may cry for vengeance in the wake of a horrible crime, but we know that killing the criminal will not undo the crime, will not prevent similar crimes by others, does not benefit the victim, destroys human life and brutalizes society. If we are to still violence, we must cherish life. Executions cheapen life.

Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.

Every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral pyre of one condemned.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true - that savagery begets only savagery.

There is no salvation for us but to adopt Civilization and lift ourselves down to its level.