Helen Prejean Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

Money and influence decide who is considered for a parole hearing, what the decision is likely to be and what the Governor's decision is likely to be. It is that, not your behavior in prison that decides your release.

Helen Prejean
Time rushes by and yet time is frozen. Funny how we get so exact about time at the end of life and at its beginning. She died at 6:08 or 3:46, we say, or the baby was born at 4:02. But in between we slosh through huge swatches of time--weeks, months, years, decades even.

Helen Prejean
I realize that I cannot stand by silently as my government executes its citizens. If I do not speak out and resist, I am an accomplice.

Helen Prejean
Later that year I finally got it. I began to realize that my spiritual life had been too ethereal, too disconnected. To follow Jesus and to be close to Jesus meant that I needed to seek out the company of poor and struggling people.

Helen Prejean
I tell people to go back to the gospel. Look at who Jesus hung out with: lepers, prostitutes, thieves — the throwaways of his day. If we call ourselves Jesus' disciples, we too have to keep ministering to the marginated, the throwaways, the lepers of today. And there are no more marginated, thrown-away, and leprous people in our society than death-row inmates.

Helen Prejean
If I were to be murdered I would not want my murderer executed. I would not want my death avenged. Especially by government — which can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.

Helen Prejean
I tell myself that I had simply better accept the fact that the death penalty is here to stay in our society, at least for a while, and there is nothing I can do about it. Maybe, in time — after how many executions? — people will come to realize the futility of randomly selecting a few people to die each year.

Helen Prejean
The death penalty is firmly in place, but people are beginning to ask, "If this is supposed to be the solution, how come we're not feeling any better? How come none of us feels safer?"

Helen Prejean
I would learn that the divorce rate for couples who lose a child is over 70 percent — a sad new twist to "until death do us part."

Helen Prejean
There's a lot of what I call "biblical quarterbacking" going on in death-penalty debates: people toss in quotes from the Bible to back up what they've already decided anyway. People want to not only practice vengeance but also have God agree with them.

Helen Prejean
I don't see capital punishment as a peripheral issue about some criminals at the edge of society that people want to execute. I see the death penalty connected to the three deepest wounds of our society: racism, poverty, and violence.

Helen Prejean
It didn't take long to see that for poor people, especially poor black people, there was a greased track to prison and death row. As one Mama in St. Thomas put it: "Our boys leave here in a police car or a hearse."

Helen Prejean
I keep thinking of the gifts of my own upbringing, which I once took for granted: I can read any book I choose and comprehend it. I can write a complete sentence and punctuate it correctly. If I need help, I can call on judges, attorneys, educators, ministers. I wonder what I would be like if I had grown up without such protections and supports. What cracks would have turned up in my character?

Helen Prejean
The profound moral question is not, "Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?"

Helen Prejean
Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and cleanly as you can.

Helen Prejean
If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well.

Helen Prejean
The paths of history are stained with the blood of those who have fallen victim to "God's Avengers." Kings, popes, military generals, and heads of state have killed, claiming God's authority and God's blessing. I do not believe in such a God.

Helen Prejean
Jesus Christ, whose way of life I try to follow, refused to meet hate with hate and violence with violence. I pray for the strength to be like him.

Helen Prejean
I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power to torture and kill.

Helen Prejean
I wish Pope John Paul II in his encyclical "The Gospel of Life" had been as firm and unconditional as the U.N.'s [Universal Declaration on Human Rights].

Helen Prejean