I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.
Interpretation
Executions are outdated and fail to address the real issues of justice and revenge.
In this quote, Albert Pierrepoint expresses his belief that capital punishment is not a solution to crime or societal issues, but rather an outdated response rooted in a desire for vengeance. He argues that this practice shifts the burden of revenge onto others, and highlights the inherent contradictions and inequalities in deciding who deserves such a penalty, revealing the flaws in our justice system.
In practice
During a debate on the morality of capital punishment, this quote can effectively highlight the need for reform in the justice system.
It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree....I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.
There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meager that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may flash forth with the life of God.
The moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement, then they assign all the baggage and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important there is to know about you because of that association. And that's not the way to have a conversation.
Let's develop theories, patiently and honestly thinking them out, in order to promptly act against them – acting and justifying our actions with new theories that condemn them. Let's cut a path in life and then go immediately against that path. Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't even wish to be, and don't even wish to taken for being.
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature.
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.