Scaffold Quotes

If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I would shout, 'Freedom for the working class! (Mary Harris Jones)
The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime-for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold. View quote
Marquis de Sade
When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything. View quote
H. L. Mencken
We must recognise that we have a great treasure to guard; that the inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries; that there is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause. Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause? View quote
Winston Churchill
The school-room sends men to the Legislature, to the bench, and the executive office. The bar-room sends them to the scaffold and hell. View quote
Thomas Jordan Jarvis
Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies. View quote
Anne Rice
Here is the hammer, that build the scaffold, and built the box... View quote
Nick Cave
Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then. View quote
Lucy Parsons
It was like a dream of hell, when a man finds his own name staring at him from the Devil's ledger; like a dream of death, when he who comes as mourner finds himself in the coffin, or as witness to a hanging, the condemned upon the scaffold. View quote
Thomas Wolfe
Let us stand on the scaffold of history - if hang we must - like the martyrs of Nuremberg, tall and proud! Is life so sweet, is comfort so precious and a job in a Jewish counting house so sacred that we are AFRAID to grasp the mighty hand of ADOLF HITLER reaching down to us our of our glorious past? View quote
George Lincoln Rockwell
A great prison structure was planned, whose different levels would correspond exactly to the levels of the centralized administration. The scaffold, where the body of the tortured criminal had been exposed to the ritually manifested force of the sovereign, the punitive theatre in which the representation of punishment was permanently available to the social body, was replaced by a great enclosed, complex and hierarchized structure that was integrated into the very body of the state apparatus. (Michel Foucault)
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,- Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. View quote
James Russell Lowell
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. View quote
James Russell Lowell
The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell, meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ, or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and bravest of his subjects, dies like a saint. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The church has had the field for eighteen hundred years. For most of this time it has held the sword and purse of the world. For many centuries it controlled colleges and universities and schools. It had within its gift wealth and honor. It held the keys, so far as this world is concerned, of heaven and hell-that is to say, of prosperity and misfortune. It pursued its enemies even to the grave. It reddened the scaffold with the best blood, and kept the sword of persecution wet for many centuries. Thousands and thousands have died in its dungeons. Millions of reputations have been blasted by its slanders. It has made millions of widows and orphans, and it has not only ruled this world, but it has pretended to hold the keys of eternity, and under this pretence (sic) it has sentenced countless millions to eternal flames. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake. View quote
Wendell Phillips
Soon after completing the 'La Combe' series [circa 1950] I had a dream in which I was assisted by many children on a scaffold, painting a huge mural made up of square panels fitted together. Each panel was being painted by a child very quickly in long black strokes with huge brushes. The work was done in seconds. Upon waking I immediately made a reminder sketch of the mural. Later I made a drawing of many ink strokes, which I cut up into twenty squares and placed at random in a four-by-five grid.. View quote
Ellsworth Kelly
The crime and not the scaffold makes the shame. View quote
Pierre Corneille
It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace. View quote
Pierre Corneille
Each [ideology], in the oppressive air of conformity which ideologies create, will force public figures to conform or be ruined on the scaffold of ridicule. In a society of ideological believers, nothing is more ridiculous than the individual who doubts and does not conform. View quote
John Ralston Saul
Look at the men themselves who lead in this cause. Is there one among them with whom you would trust yourself in the dark? Can you have, I will not say, any confidence in their opinions and principles, but any doubt of the wickedness of their intentions? Look at them, at their characters, at their conduct. What is there more base, and more detestable, more at variance with all tact and decency, as well as all morality, truth, and honour? A cause so supported cannot be a good cause. They may use Burdett as an instrument for a time, and you also if you place yourself in their trammels, but depend upon it, if a convulsion follows their attempt to work upon the minds of the people, inflamed as they now are by distress, for which your reform will afford a very inadequate remedy, I shall not precede you many months on the scaffold, which you will have assisted in preparing for us both. (Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey)
When one puts up a building one makes an elaborate scaffold to get everything into its proper place. But when one takes the scaffold down, the building must stand by itself with no trace of the means by which it was erected. That is how a musician should work. View quote
Andres Segovia
I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please. View quote
Mother Jones
I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. View quote
Mary Harris Jones
But whether on the scaffold high Or in the battle's van, The fittest place where man can die Is where he dies for man! View quote
Michael Joseph Barry