The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to...

If the Pentateuch is inspired, the civilization of of our day is a mistake and crime. There should be no political liberty. Heresy should be trodden out beneath the bigot’s brutal feet. Husbands should divorce...

It shows that the death penalty smear attack fell on its face.

It is sad but so many tragedies can be avoided, if we extend a little bit of love to one another.

If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God....

We believe that the death penalty is not appropriate under the facts of this case.

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.

Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, ever ordered a man to be killed simply for making hair oil, or ointment? We are told in the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, that...

The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly expiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has...

“” ― Neil Gaiman

There were eleven votes for “guilty.” It’s not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.

There were complex and complicating factors. … It was a difficult case. But any time we get to have a conversation with the American public about the fairness of the death penalty, it helps us.

I believe […] that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust...

People who change their religion should face the death penalty.

It would take me a long time to understand how systems inflict pain and hardship in people’s lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough.

Without knowing it the girl was arguing on the side of the world’s expert criminologists, who hold that to destroy an offender cannot benefit society so much as to redeem him.

It was about that time [415 BCE] that the poet Diagoras of Melos was proscribed for atheism, he having declared that the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that there were no gods....

I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.

Gates got up, but not fast or jerkily, with the same slowness that had always characterized him. He wiped the sweat off his palms by running them lightly down his sides. As though he were...

But secondly you say ‘society must exact vengeance, and society must punish’. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.

through god’s eyes murder is still murder. there’s no such thing as a legal murder, it’s only legal through the eyes of a murderer.

A solemn day. Barring a stay by Sup Ct, & with my final nod, Utah will use most extreme power & execute a killer. Mourn his victims. Justice.[…] I just gave the go ahead to...

Remember Father, evil is simply ‘live’ spelt backwards.” Hellbound

I wrote that certain things were leaving me nauseated. I said that judges made me feel that way. Not most of them but all of them. I said that you for example, the judge I’m...

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.”[On Water]

They found him guilty, and brother, if Maine had the death penalty, he would have done the airdance before that spring’s crocuses poked their heads out of the dirt.