Execution Methods Quotes

To chop off the heads of men I use a special sword, following the writings of the prophet Mohammed, while I use a gun to execute women. When the job is done, I get a sense of delight and thank God for giving me this power.

Some heinous crimes justify the ultimate punishment.

If a man dies when you hang him, keep hanging him until he gets used to it.

I’m not necessarily against the death penalty. But I am damn sure against the wrong man getting executed.

All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

I don't think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don't think that's right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives.

In England, the ultimate execution method for men who committed high treason was hanging, drawing, and quartering. It was considered indecent at the time to mutilate a woman’s body in this way, so female traitors were burnt at the stake.

The penalty of death is the only one that makes an injustice absolutely irreparable; from which it follows that the existence of the death penalty implies that one is exposed to committing an irreparable injustice; from which it follows that it is unjust to establish it. This reasoning appears to us to have the force of a demonstration.

This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?

Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.

We have a legal system, and we have a penal code. We have the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and people should respect this.

The death penalty symbolizes whom we fear and don't fear, whom we care about and whose lives are not valid.

Those subject to capital punishment are real human beings, with their own backgrounds and narratives. By contrast, those whose lives are or might be saved by virtue of capital punishment are mere 'statistical people.' They are both nameless and faceless, and their deaths are far less likely to be considered in moral deliberations.

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

The Supreme Court of the United States... has validated the Nazi method of execution in... concentration camps, starving them to death.

Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.

The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England for such as offend against the State is drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half dead, and then taken down, and quartered alive; after that, their members and bowels are cut from their bodies, and thrown into a fire, provided near hand and within their own sight, even for the same purpose.

Like cellulite creams or hair-loss tonics, capital punishment is one of those panaceas that isn't. Only it costs a whole lot more.

I don't have any personal upset at the death penalty as an abstraction, What I do realize is how many mistakes can be made with the way things are being done now.

Christ’s crucifix shall be made an excuse for executing criminals.

We are talking about a pendulum of decency when it comes to societal standards…At one point the guillotine was fine. At one point the firing squad was fine. Our Supreme court is trying to make it more palatable by saying “death by lethal injection”

We have a legal system, and this is not something that happens all the time. We have capital punishment. America has capital punishment. Iran has capital punishment. Iran hangs people and leaves their bodies hanging on cranes. Iran put to death more than a thousand people last year. I don't see EU reporting on it.

Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life.

If you have to be burned at the stake, be a good fellow and collect your own fire-wood.

What you do to these men on California's Death Row, you do to God.