Matt Dillon Quotes
I don't hang anyone—the law does.
Marshall Matt Dillon, Gunsmoke
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Senator was arguing against a bill to correct an aspect of the immigration law where infants and very young clildren are broght to the United States by parents who entered illegally. The children grow up in the United States—the only country and home that they have ever known. American law required that they be deported to “their countries” which they have no memory of and many do not even speak the language or know the culture. Sessions, is an example of the view that law defines justice. Therefore laws cannot be unjust nor can enforcing the law. Opponents point out that even in the United States we have, in earlier times, “enforced the law” which we came to regret and see as an injustice. The Fugitive slave laws, the Southern racial discrimination laws, and the law allowing Japanese American Citizens to be interned and lose their land during WWII are a few examples of laws, the enforcement of which is seen by most Americans as having been unjust. The execution of “witches” in early America was in conformity with the law.
The book was very critical of the way capitol punishment is meted out in Singapore. The Singapore Attorney General’s Office then claimed that the book had brought disrespect on the courts of Singapore by being so critical and tried him for “criminal defamation”. Shadrake was fined $30,000 and when he planned on publishing a second edition he was tried again and threatened with Jail. The fundamental problem is that if part of a nation’s government is corrupt, ineffective or incompetent and someone tells that to the public, there will certainly be less respect for the institution. So demanding respect, is tantamount to abandoning freedom of speech in general and criticism of the government in particular,
As this quotation demonstrates, capital punishment was approved in the Old Testament for criminals and hanging was a Biblically sanctioned method of execution.
Matthew Raymond Dillon is an American actor and film director. He made his feature film debut in Over the Edge (1979) and established himself as a teen idol by starring in the films My Bodyguard (1980), Little Darlings (1980), the three S. E. Hinton book adaptations Tex (1982), Rumble Fish (1983), The Outsiders (1983) and The Flamingo Kid (1984). From the late 1980s onward, Dillon achieved further success, starring in Drugstore Cowboy (1989), Singles (1992), The Saint of Fort Washington (1993), To Die For (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), In & Out (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), and Wild Things (1998). In a 1991 article, famed movie critic Roger Ebert referred to him as the best actor within his age group, along with Sean Penn.
