"We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.”

“One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then”

“The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, would be good for me, too.”

“Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.”

“You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.”

“More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the [biblical] texts that authorised them remain.”

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”

“Once negro community recognize it as such, they can adopt the same measures against the community that harbors the criminals who are responsible for this activity.”

“There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.”