Victim Quotes - Page 29

• As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder.

  Coretta Scott King

  Mother, Husband, Law

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• With respect to the death penalty, I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That day will be a great day for our country, for it will be a great day for our Constitution.

  William J. Brennan

  Country, Believe, Punishment

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• Our emotions may cry for vengeance in the wake of a horrible crime, but we know that killing the criminal will not undo the crime, will not prevent similar crimes by others, does not benefit the victim, destroys human life and brutalizes society. If we are to still violence, we must cherish life. Executions cheapen life.

  Ramsey Clark

  Violence, Execution, Criminals

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• If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call.

  John C. McAdams

  Risk, Facts, Death Penalty

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• Pontius Pilate was the first great censor and Jesus Christ the first great victim of censorship

  Ben Lindsey

  Jesus, Firsts, Censorship

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• Victims should come first.

  Maria Julia Hernandez

  Firsts, Human Rights, Should

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• We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Zoos, Past, Racism

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• I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of "accuser" and "accused" is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode.

  Mary Robinson

  Country, Attitude, Believe

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• We should not give up and say that the situation is hopeless. There is still our conscience, there is still the memory of the victims of this war, there is still our duty to try and prevent further bloodshed. We have to prosecute all the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

  Lidia Yusupova

  Giving Up, Memories, War

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• The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode . . . .

  Kofi Annan

  Country, Reality, Rights

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• Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites that has not yet been achieved in reality...Preferences tend to attack one form of discrimination with another...Affirmative action encourages a victim-focused identity, and sends the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements.

  Shelby Steele

  Past, Reality, Giving

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• Blacks who have not succumbed to the victim culture have been, are and will be doing quite well - all on their own, without handouts, affirmative action and other patronizing measures

  Tammy Bruce

  Culture, Action, Handouts

  Tammy Bruce (2003). “The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values”, Prima Lifestyles

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• Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

  Albert Camus

  Death, Punishment, Dying

  "Reflections on the Guillotine". Book by Albert Camus, 1957.

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• History has shown that the greater power of the gun is its power to deter. Bear in mind that criminals, by definition, target only victims they believe they can overpower. When the intended victim draws a gun, the predator realizes that their erstwhile target has the ability to kill them instantly. This tends to modify their behavior immediately without a shot being fired.

  Massad Ayoob

  Believe, Gun, Mind

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• It seems that the concealed carry policy now in effect in 30 states is unfair to goblins. They cannot tell who is armed and who is not, and when their intended victim shoots back it hurts their feelings - along with other things.

  Jeff Cooper

  Hurt, Gun, Feelings

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• A fine thing to be talking about angels in this day when common thieves smash the holy rosaries of their victims in the street.

  Jack Kerouac

  Angel, Talking, Rosary

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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• I don't view myself as a victim of gun violence. I view myself as a victim of a maniac who happened to use a gun as a tool, and I view myself as a victim of the legislators at the time who left me defenseless.

  Suzanna Hupp

  Gun, Views, Tools

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• If we can't turn the world around we can at least bolster the victims.

  Liz Carpenter

  Memorable, World, Turns

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• It does not matter to the killers if their victims are Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Humanist; what matters is that they show that they can kill where they please.

  Rowan Williams

  Christian, What Matters, Doe

  "Today is not an occasion for us to focus on fear" by Rowan Williams, www.theguardian.com. November 1, 2005.

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• The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he's a the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

  Malcolm X

  Powerful, Hate, Media Control

  Malcolm X's speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem (December 13, 1964) as quoted in "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements" edited by George Breitman (p. 93), 1965.

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• You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Reality, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.323, Penguin

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• Modern Man is the victim of the very instruments he values most. Every gain in power, every mastery of natural forces, every scientific addition to knowledge, has proved potentially dangerous, because it has not been accompanied by equal gains in self-understanding and self-discipline.

  Lewis Mumford

  Men, Self, Discipline

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• Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.

  Arundhati Roy

  Children, War, Fighting

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• Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Fighting, Men

  Eugene V. Debs' speech he gave across the street from a jail, where he had just visited three socialists who were in prison for opposing the draft, June 1918.

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• Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.

  Aldous Huxley

  Language, Tradition, Individual

  Aldous Huxley (2009). “The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell”, p.15, Harper Collins

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