Peggy Noonan Quotes

...it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing was wrong; or, if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.

It is a lamentable reflection that a man may be at the same time so insane as to be reckless of his own life and the lives of others, and to be pronounced free from moral responsibility, and yet capable of preparing for the commission of murder with the utmost caution and deliberation, and of taking every step which shall enable him to commit it with certainty.

Libertarians recognize the difference between adults and children, as well as differences between normal adults and adults who are insane or mentally hindered or retarded.

What makes someone too mentally ill to be executed? There is no clean answer to this question. But the attempt to answer it consumes substantial resources. If capital punishment had a demonstrable impact on crime, it might make sense to struggle with such a difficult balancing. But any deterrent effect is trivial at best, so the effort devoted to these decisions is wasted.

'Crazy' is a term of art; 'Insane' is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.

We have an insanity plea that would have saved Cain.

I think everybody who commits a violent killing is in some way crazy. But that doesn't mean we can let them off the hook for that.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

Well, many insane people and seriously mentally ill people seem very reasonable.

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

I'm crazy, but I'm not too crazy.

God will not damn a lunatic's soul. He knows that the powers of evil are too great for those of us with weak minds.

What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.

The idea of a mentally ill vice president who suffers in complete isolation was obviously sparked by the behaviors I witnessed by Sarah Palin. What if somebody who was ill-equipped for the office were to ascend to the presidency or vice presidency? What would they do? How long would it take for people to figure it out?

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

I'm not a madman.

There's a big difference between sanity and insanity.

It would be an outrage against civilization if he were sent to jail for an act which was the product of a diseased brain

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.

The absent partie is still faultie.

The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.

Heaven knows insanity was disreputable enough, long ago; but now that the lawyers have got to cutting every gallows rope and picking every prison lock with it, it is become a sneaking villainy that ought to hang and keep on hanging its sudden possessors until evil-doers should conclude that the safest plan was to never claim to have it until they came by it legitimately. The very calibre of the people the lawyers most frequently try to save by the insanity subterfuge ought to laugh the plea out of the courts, one would think.

I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.