“The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.”

—  Noam Chomsky

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it…" by Noam Chomsky?
Noam Chomsky photo
Noam Chomsky 334
american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

Related quotes

Mao Zedong photo

“All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Chapter 6 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch06.htm, originally published in Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong (August 1946), Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 100.
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)

Ron White photo

“Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the others can only be hurt.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

The Coming World Civilization (1956), p. 7.

Bianca Jagger photo

“The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.”

Bianca Jagger (1945) Nicaraguan-born social and human rights advocate and a former actress
Margaret Thatcher photo
Dinesh D'Souza photo
Alphonse Karr photo

“If one wants to abolish the death penalty in this case, Messrs. murderers should take the first step: they do not kill, we will not kill them.”

Alphonse Karr (1808–1890) French critic, journalist, and novelist

Si l'on veut abolir la peine de mort en ce cas, que MM. les assassins commencent: qu'ils ne tuent pas, on ne les tuera pas.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5RAoAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Si+l'on+veut+abolir+la+peine+de+mort+en+ce+cas+que%22+%22MM+les+assassins+commencent+qu'ils+ne+tuent+pas+on+ne+les+tuera+pas%22&pg=PA304#v=onepage
Les Guêpes, January 1849, vi.

Timothy McVeigh photo

“Death penalty, is would you call it and Oxymoron. Death is not a penalty. It's an escape. They treat me like a trophy, like they got me, their gonna kill me, and we won. They didn't win. In the crudest terms, 168 to 1.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Interview for American Terrorist (2001) by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck
2000s

Monte Melkonian photo

“All these new demands, death penalty for rape and long terms in prison for harassing women will only have the offenders roaming free because the burden of proving "beyond reasonable doubt" will become the victim's problem.”

Flavia Agnes (1947) Indian activist and lawyer

On the proposal for stricter laws for sexual harassment, as quoted in " Sexism And The Workplace Wars http://www.outlookindia.com/article/sexism-and-the-workplace-wars/207315" Outlook India (19 April 1999)

Related topics