Rick Perry Quotes

The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.

Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high.

This death sentence is not surprising. It had to be.

My dad once told me, he was like, 'The only time you should lie is when someone's holding a gun to your head and says 'Okay, lie or I'm going to shoot you.' And that really stuck with me.

I have always tried my best to do what I thought was the right thing at the time.

When a mad man is executed, it is a miserable spectacle, both against law, and of extreme inhumanity and cruelty, and can be no example to others.

I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: (1) Irreversibility in the event of an error in justice; (2) detrimental moral influence on those who have to carry out the procedure.

You don't know what the [ethical] rules are until the gallows pull up in front of your door and they drag you out to hang you.

This is the one issue [the death penalty] that I have received more advice about than any issue in 35 years of public life…. Whatever I decide, one side or the other will not accept it.

Do I favor the death penalty? Theoretically, I do, but when you realize that there's a 4 percent error rate, you end up putting guilty people to death.

The death penalty in the U.S. has become a political tool - and it should never be that.

Those who support the death penalty are accepting a practice that is both ineffective and fundamentally flawed.

You have to follow your moral compass: it's a good guide of telling you what is right and wrong.

In death row every rule in society is flipped.

Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process. Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering.

Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed?

I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then asketh: "Am I a dishonest player?" - for he is willing to succumb.

Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But Conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.

There is no justice in killing in the name of justice.

A brave man hazards life, but not his conscience.

You've got to be brave and you've got to be bold. Brave enough to take your chance on your own discrimination, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad.

Would we be the heroes or the cowards of the piece? Would we follow orders or stick to our principles, if those two things ever conflicted? Would we be the brave ones who still found the capacity for love - and for laughter - even while we were terrified?

How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.