Jeff Cooper Quotes

Crime is the number one problem in Russia.

The state is not the agent of mercy or charity, but is the instrument of God's vengeance against those who disturb the public peace through theft, violence, or negligence. To the state belongs the power of the sword, which consists of the right to execute those who are worthy of death, to inflict corporal punishment, and to require restitution to the victims of theft and bodily injury.

Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg was of little consequence. They constitute a portion of the population that is worse than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is never a matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually swept from the stage of existence by the plague or smallpox, honest men would perhaps be much profited by the operation.

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.

Crime, to the man of the forties, was an alien monstrous terror.

I think capital punishment works great. Every killer you kill never kills again.

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It's very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.

I've always hated criminals and crime. Life is hard enough without someone walking into your life on purpose and making it worse.

Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

People want to kill people because they don't want them out on the street again.

Criminals are not the victims of society; society is the victim of criminals.

The most malign of all these dangers today is disregard and disobedience of law. Crime is increasing. Confidence in rigid and speedy justice is decreasing.

Robbery is a crime; rape is a crime; murder is a crime; treason is a crime and crime must be punished. The law provides for it, and the courts are open. Treason must be made infamous and traitors must be impoverished.

As to the thief, male or female cut off his or her hands.

People believe in capital punishment to the extent that it seems to be fair, but if fairness is in question, they prefer life imprisonment…. The death penalty as a way of deterrence is just not turning out to be true.

Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked ; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists.

But passing by all other considerations, and contemplating merely the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them.

As a society are we going to murder people to show that murder is wrong

When you criminalize something, only criminals can deal with it. When criminals deal with it, there's no recourse to law, so there's only recourse to violence.