Absolutes Quote by William J. Brennan

Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices. To equate…

— Don Feder

One area of law more than any other besmirches the constitutional vision of human dignity. . . . The barbaric death penalty violates our…

— William J. Brennan

We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately…

— Potter Stewart

Of one thing, however, I am certain. Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned…

— Harry A. Blackmun

“The death penalty costs too much. Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the…

— Helen Prejean

States kill when they apply the death penalty, when they send their people to war, or when they carry out extra-judicial or summary executions.…

— Pope Francis

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency,…

— Albert Camus

The death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are…

— Blase J. Cupich

For when a nation becomes civilized, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as…

— James G. Frazer

The most horrible thing is not a government that stages public executions, but a government that secretly disposes of its victims.

— Lu Xun

In sorting out my feelings and beliefs, there is, however, one piece of moral ground of which I am absolutely certain: if I were…

— Anonymous

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society.

— Andrei Sakharov