Jack Kevorkian Quotes

When I was in jail I could only think about what the average person has to go through - the person who has no power to go to the press or no money to hire a lawyer.

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.

They know, the courts know, the people know that they have no way of changing the results as it affects them.

So what exactly are the rewards of resentment. It is always a relief to know that the reason we have failed in life is not because we lack the talent, energy, or determination to succeed, but because of a factor that is beyond our control and that has loaded the dice decisively against us.

The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

Nothing exasperates the spirit in man more than power which seems unconquerable and which makes impotent all protest.

There are reasons to doubt that our criminal justice system is fundamentally just.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely

They got the judges / They got the lawyers / They got the jury rolls / They got the law / They don’t come by ones. / They got the sheriffs / They got the deputies / They don’t come by twos. / They got the shotguns / They got the rope / We git the justice / In the end / And they come by tens.

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws

Those who are most desperate for change are those who are the most powerless to effect it.

The Supreme Court has made it nearly impossible to prove race discrimination in the criminal justice system.

There are people who are victims in life, and I don't think they should be encouraged.

Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

Pain is unjust, and all the arguments That cannot soothe it only rouse suspicion.

Everybody's trying to hold onto some shred of dignity in the process of it all, and, at the same time, never talking about how they don't have the power. No one has the power. So, you know, producers - we always think, "Well, producers are very powerful," but producers don't really have the power.

Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.

But let us say he was (guilty). Let us for a moment say he was (guilty). What justice would there be to take his life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.

... the keynote of government is injustice.

Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power.

He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing.

If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.

You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.