George Carlin Quotes

If people want to take their lives and are helped to do so, the punishment is tragic for all concerned.

There's a group in California that wants to make suicide a capital offense punishable by death. That's like punishing someone for being on a hunger strike by sending them to bed with no supper.

Everybody believes that capital punishment is wrong, but when they look at certain cases, they're quick to say, 'Put them to death,' or scream 'capital punishment.'

The death penalty issue is obviously a divisive one. But whether one is for or against, you can not deny the basic illogic - if we know the system is flawed, if we know there are innocent people on Death Row, then until the system is reformed, should we not abandon the death penalty to protect those who are innocent?

Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?

I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high.

Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.

I’m not necessarily against the death penalty. But I am damn sure against the wrong man getting executed.

If we are trying to establish a culture of life, it’s difficult to have the state sponsoring executions.

I don’t like the death penalty but it was the law in Ohio. Therefore as a prosecutor I sought the death penalty and as a judge I imposed the death penalty. It was the law and you have to obey the law.

If we as a society are willing to take human life, then we should be willing to watch it being taken.

The death penalty is inhumane... whether that person is in a [jail] or it's bin Laden.

Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.

Suicide is the #1 killer of a person who is in a boat and happens to be passing under a bridge at the wrong time.

One has to weigh all of one's values always in relative terms. On the upside, you get people who are not acting on their homosexual attraction, who are avoiding the sin of practicing homosexuality. On the downside, you have destroyed marriages, traumatized children, and dead people who have taken their own lives.

Pretty soon, the only doubt in my mind was the precise time and method of committing suicide. The only alternative I could see was an eternity of hell for the rest of my life in a mental hospital, and I was going to use my last ounce of free choice and choose a quick clean ending.

Ka thought it strangely depressing that the suicide girls had had to struggle to find a private moment to kill themselves. Even after swallowing their pills, even as they lay quietly dying, they’d had to share their rooms with others.

I would you say 25-50 percent is the likelihood that my cause of death will be suicide. Not because I am depressive but because I don't attach any moral baggage to suicide, and I have no religion to hold me back. I think suicide is our right, though I think we need to exercise it with knowledge that it can hurt others. So my assumption is that if I got a fatal disease, I'd end things before I got really sick.

Paul Edgecomb: What do you want me to do John? I'll do it. You want me to let you walk out of here and see how far you get? John Coffey: Now why would you want to do a foolish thing like that? Paul Edgecomb: When I die and I stand before God awaiting judgment and he asks me why I let one of HIS miracles die, what am I gonna say, that it was my job?

There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know.

I found that the death penalty  -  and I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue person  -  but what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?

Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.

I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.

There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy ... There's a catch. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.

Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.