George Ryan famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I am haunted by the demon of error - error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.
-- George Ryan

#Errors #Guilt #Death Penalty
In the US the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.
-- George Ryan

#People #Drug #Majority
I don't know that we do. I had thought ours worked well, but I had never examined it too closely. A lot of media people will be looking for a case that might make Texas Governor George Bush think twice about what he's doing.
-- George Ryan

#Thinking #Texas #Media
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

#Illinois #Arbitrary #Death Penalty
Was I involved in selling drivers licenses to people illegally? Hell no I wasn't. Would I have tolerated it? Hell no.
-- George Ryan

#People #Hell #Selling
While I have served in public office for 30 years, my professional training is as a pharmacist, not a lawyer or an accountant.
-- George Ryan

#Years #Office #Training
Our capitol punishment system is haunted by the demon of error- error in determining guilt, error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die... The legislation couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. I won't stand for it. I had to act... I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates.
-- George Ryan

#Animal #Errors #Punishment
I support the death penalty. But I also think there has to be no margin for error.
-- George Ryan

#Thinking #Errors #Support
I'm going to sleep well tonight knowing that I made the right decision.
-- George Ryan

#Sleep #Knowing #Decision

Error often is to be preferred to indecision.
But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.
Error sometimes supplies the surprise that makes life interesting.
We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?
...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.
It's the sort of subject that always interests me: jealousy and the language of suspicion and guilt. I think it interests people.
But who would dare condemn me in this world with no judges, where no one is innocent!
We all want to be guilty, because guilt is power.
I am against the death penalty.
I wonder if these death penalty proponents would still hold that it's worth some risk of error if it were their loved one who was murdered by the state, though innocent.

George Ryan famous quotes

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