State Sanctioned Killing Quotes

Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination.

The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful.

The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person's humanity. The most vile murder does not, in my view, release the state from constitutional restraint on the destruction of human dignity.

That's why I'm a big supporter of the death penalty. I want to be the hangman. I would put many more people to death like the kids who want to kill other people, I'd put 'em to death.

[W]e're taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder; but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism.

Our history shows that the death penalty has been unjustly imposed, innocents have been killed by the state, effective rehabilitation has been impaired, judicial administration has suffered. It is the poor, the sick, the ignorant, the powerless, and the hated who are executed.

International laws do not prohibit an intelligence agency like the CIA from carrying out targeted killings, provided it complies with the relevant international rules. These rules require … when it’s a matter of being able to kill someone in a foreign country, that all such killings be legally justified, that we know the justification, and that there are effective mechanisms for investigation, prosecution, and punishment if laws are violated.

It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government-sponsored execution.

Most people are not affected by [the death penalty]. It's like how many people are actually sent to Iraq and Afghanistan? Such a small percentage.

The death penalty is inhumane... whether that person is in a [jail] or it's bin Laden.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

It's interesting to me that killing damages the image of God when it's done by a person, but it doesn't damage it when it's done by the state.

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

Capital punishment...treats members of the human race...as objects to be toyed with and discarded.

With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don't think it's human to become an agent of the angel of death.

Execution halts your breath, helter skelter spiral death.

I want to accelerate, not slow down, the enforcement of the death penalty in Florida.

There is always a political issue whenever you empower a state to kill its own citizens … the abuse of the power as in Europe of the 20th century is the problem …. If we believe that some people ought to receive the death penalty for their crimes, there appears to be no way of executing the ones who should receive the death penalty without sweeping in ones who do not.

Remember the death penalty is murder.

I feel capitol punishment is dooming U.S.A.

Her Majesty's Executioner General and General Butcher of Ireland

The sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself.