From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a commitment to cease involvement in practices that contribute to death, reflecting a moral stance.
Harry A. Blackmun's quote signifies a profound ethical awakening, where one resolves to disengage from actions that perpetuate death, likely alluding to his views on capital punishment and morality. This declaration highlights the psychological and philosophical conflict surrounding the implications of life and death decisions, representing a pivot towards valuing life over conflict in ethical debates.
In practice
During a lecture on ethics, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of moral responsibility in decisions.
I cannot see any of these death penalty cases where there hasn't been a violation on the ground of either poverty or race. If we can ever get that straightened out, it will help. But, of course, the real answer to it is to do away with the death penalty.
From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. ... I fell morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.
Of one thing, however, I am certain. Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can prove that he is innocent. The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.
The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitutions protection of privacy.
In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.
I hope you will be yourself, human, even a little sentimental, possessed of a sense of humor and a sense of humility. . . . There are arrogant people in this world and, what is worse, arrogant judges.
It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law
The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God. [...] has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. [...] My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. [...] And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.
Whenever I think of God I can only conceive of Him as a Being infinitely great and infinitely good. This last quality of the divine nature inspires me with such confidence and joy that I could have written even a miserere in tempo allegro.
The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.
It hurts the spirit, somehow, to read the word environments, when the plural means that there are so many alternatives there to be sorted through, as in a market, and voted on.
A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.
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