A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.
Warren E. Burger

A penalty is a cowardly way to score.
Pele

Always keep your composure. You can't score from the penalty box; and to win, you have to score.
Horace

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
George Ryan

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
Albert Camus

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.
Angela Davis

Here is my general approach to the energy companies. You have already charged the utilities a 50 percent credit penalty for the power they were buying from you. You're charging us a penalty. You're not going to get two bites of the apple here.
Gray Davis

I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.
Eric Holder

I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
Nancy Reagan

I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt.
Janet Reno

I saw my parents as gods whose every wish must be obeyed or I would suffer the penalty of anguish and guilt.
Natalie Wood

I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.
George Ryan

I think people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
Nancy Reagan

I was personally opposed to the death penalty, and yet I think I have probably asked for the death penalty more than most people in the United States.
Janet Reno

I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.
Jack Kevorkian

I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.
Chief Joseph

I'm actually really opposed to the death penalty.
Bill Paxton

I'm pro-death penalty, but what I have not seen is anybody that would mock someone on death row.
Gary Bauer