Hasidic saying

Be the master of your will and the slave of your conscience. -Hasidic saying

Great, as long as your conscience is well formed.

Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

And rightly so. If we have found a reason ourselves, we know the process that led to it, but we don't immediately know the process by which another developed his or her reason.

Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, moralist (1613-1680)

Absence diminishes commonplace passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire. -Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, moralist (1613-1680)

I can't say that my experience ratifies the statement, but I love the analogy!

Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)

But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. -Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)

Camus's view is limited to the criminal himself and tries to elicit sympathy for him. Left out of consideration is the criminal's victims, not past victims but potential future victims. Not that capital punishment is justified in every case, but there is more to be considered than the feelings of the condemned man.