Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, State Execution Quotes

Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak administrative regions must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us the "final decisive battle" against the kulaks. We need to set an example. You need to hang (most definitely hang, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, the bloodsuckers. This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks. Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this. Yours, Lenin…. P.S. Find some of the tougher people for this.

Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. … Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.

Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, capture and besiege them and prepare for them every kind of ambush…But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free.

We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.

I've prepared 100 coffins. 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself.

Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.

It is better to destroy 100 innocent people than to let one guilty one escape.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men.

‘Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators,’ said Dr Johnson. ‘If they do not draw spectators, they don’t answer their purpose.’

All power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner …. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.

If forgers and other malefactors are put to death by the secular power, there is much more reason for excommunicating and even putting to death one convicted of heresy.

Crucifixion is the most cruel and disgusting penalty; the worst of deaths.

I never use my sword when the lash suffices, nor the lash when my tongue is enough.

Public hangings [in England] were abolished in 1868. The last one took place outside Newgate Prison on 26 May of that same year. The man hanged was an Irish terrorist called Michael Barratt who had blown up the Clerkenwell House of Detention killing six people. A drunken crowd stayed up all night to witness the execution. They cheered wildly when the scaffold was brought out at dawn. More people – mainly young women and children – began to arrive. By the time a bell was sounded at eight o’clock in the morning to announce the arrival of the condemned man, the crowd stretched back as far as Smithfield.

It is wonderful to hear what account we at present give ourselves of the punishment of criminals. No "revenge"--O Heavens, no; all preachers on Sunday strictly forbid that; and even (at least on Sundays) prescribe the contrary of that. It is for the sake of "example," that you punish; to "protect society" and its purse and skin; to deter the innocent from falling into crime; and especially withal, for the purpose of improving the poor criminal himself,--or at lowest, of hanging and ending him, that he may not grow worse. For the poor criminal is, to be "improved" if possible:

I could not afford to hang men for votes.

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.

I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.

The victims of crime have been transformed into a group oppressively burdened by a system designed to protect them.

I forbid that any one be killed or hung for any fault but his eyes shall be torn out or his testicles cut off. And this command shall not be violated under penalty of a fine in full to me.