Firing Squad Quotes & Sayings

The talk of pale, burning-eyed students, anarchists and utopians all, over tea and cigarettes in a locked room long past midnight, is next morning translated, with the literalness of utter innocence, into the throwing of the bomb, the shouting of the proud slogan, the dragging away of the young dreamer-doer, still smiling, to the dungeon and the firing squad. — Christopher Isherwood

Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face. — Ayn Rand

What, exactly, are you talking about?" "I'm talking about love." "I'm unconvinced." "I wasn't attempting to convince you. I'm now sufficiently tranquil not to have to convince anyone of anything." "Will you be tranquil in front of the firing squad?" "I don't know. We'll see tomorrow. You'll be able to watch from the window." Alessandro winked at Ludovico, to show him that he was undisturbed. "The way you winked," Ludovico said accusingly, "the way you winked at me was just like a religious fanatic." "Sorry," Alessandro said. "I'll try to wink like a Marxist. — Mark Helprin

The whole famous Reign of Terror [of the 1790s] in fifteen months guillotined 2,596 aristos. The Versaillists [the anti-Communards of 1871] executed 20,000 before their firing squads in one week. Do these figures represent the comparative efficiency of guillotine and modern rifle or the comparative cruelty of upper and lower class mobs? — Guy Endore

Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter - with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command - and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad - that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness - for the present only in the East - with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians? — Adolf Hitler

I want a military funeral when I die-the bugler, the flag on the casket, the ceremonial firing squad, the hallowed ground ... It will be a way of achieving what I've always wanted more than anything-something I could have had, if only I'd managed to get myself killed in the war ... The unqualified approval of my community. — Kurt Vonnegut

He himself, facing a firing squad, would not understand too well the concatenation of the series of subtle but irrevocable accidents that bought him to that point. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Tatiana knew she had been born too late into the family. She and Pasha. She should have been born in 1917, like Dasha. After her there were other children, but not for long: two brothers, one born in 1919 and one in 1921, died of typhus. A girl, born in 1922, died of scarlet fever in 1923. Then in 1924, as Lenin was dying and the New Economic Plan - that short-lived return to free enterprise - was coming to an end, while Stalin was scheming to enlarge his power base in the presidium through the firing squad, Pasha and Tatiana were born seven minutes apart to a very tired twenty-five-year-old Irina Fedorovna. The family wanted Pasha, their boy, but Tatiana was a stunning surprise. No one had twins. Who had twins? Twins were almost unheard of. And there was no room for her. She and Pasha had to share a crib for the first three years of their life. Since then Tatiana slept with Dasha. — Paullina Simons

My biggest problem is that my flight is to depart from Denpasar International Airport in Indonesia, where the penalty for drug trafficking is death by firing squad. — S.A. Tawks

Refusing! And she is after me with a broom, trying to sweep my rotten carcass into the open. Why, shades of Gregor Samsa! Hello Alex, goodbye Franz! "You better tell me you're sorry, you, or else! And I don't mean maybe either!" I am five, maybe six, and she is or-elsing me and not-meaning-maybe as though the firing squad is already outside, lining the street with newspaper preparatory to my execution. — Philip Roth

Alas, some of those crackpots will only be eliminated by something lethal, such as a firing squad. The best we can do unless you want to invoke such lethal force is the segregation - the quarantine, perhaps - of those that pollute the hive mind with their irrational gibberings — Andrew Williams

I guess having one hundred and four condoms full of heroin in your guts and the thought of a firing squad in your head make will make most things seem insignificant. — S.A. Tawks

Where everything is words, you'd think I'd have some mastery and know my way around, but all this churning hatred, each man a verbal firing squad, immeasurable suspicions, a flood of mocking, angry talk, all of life a vicious debate, conversations in which there is nothing that cannot be said ... no, I'd be better off in the jungle, I thought, where a roar's a roar and no one is hard put to miss its meaning. — Philip Roth

Get moving. We need to find that stag so I don't have to chop your head off."
"I never said you had to chop my head off," I grumbled, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and stumbling after him.
"Run you through with a sword, then? Firing squad?"
"I was thinking something quieter, like maybe a nice poison."
"All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn't say how."
I stuck my tongue out at his back, but I was glad to see him so energized, and I suppose it was a good thing that he could joke about it all. At least, I hoped he was joking. — Leigh Bardugo

Of course, Mao made his mistakes, because everybody does, but at least he allowed working people to smoke, even in the most trying circumstances, such as when, for one reason or another, they found themselves up before the firing squad. — Tony Benn

Every baby born
unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come
due in twenty years with interest, an anger
that must find a target, a pain that will
beget pain. A decade downstream a child
screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,
a firing squad is summoned, a button
is pushed and the world burns. — Marge Piercy

Through all the ages the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to exploiter - every form of iniquity: from exile to disfranchisement to expropriation - every form of torture: from sneers to rack to firing squad - have been brought down upon those who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection. Yet only to the extent to which - in chains, in dungeons, in hidden corners, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders - some men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to survive. — Ayn Rand

It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad. — Frederick Forsyth

I just there for two days and that thought of what last words I could say to the firing squad. As good a pastime as any. — Ayn Rand

Unless the consequence is 'death by firing squad' in my opinion, you do have a choice, and when you choose to do something as opposed to have to do it, you feel so much more motivated and inspired to do it. — Malti Bhojwani

You look peaceful," he tells her. "Maybe that's what a man feels when he stands before a firing squad. There is nothing one can do to delay the inevitable, and so it's best just to stand tall." Morton — Jennie Fields

The great principle of Justice: prevent crime rather than punish it. All that is needed to execute a guilty man is a firing squad or a hangman. To prevent there being guilty men requires great astuteness. — Augusto Roa Bastos

A vertical battled pitted the Italians against the Austrians, who were starving up in the mountains.
The Italians also sent men to the firing squad "to set an example". I couldn't make up my mind which was more appalling: the mining war or the mountain war. And between an Italian general and a French one, I wouldn't've known which one to shoot first. — Jacques Tardi

We executed many people by firing squad without knowing if they were fully guilty. At times, the Revolution cannot stop to conduct much investigation; it has the obligation to triumph. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Ten thousand people wrote letters to the governor of Utah, protesting the verdict, but Joe Hill was executed by a firing squad. Before he died he wrote to Bill Haywood, another IWW leader, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize." Socialism, — Howard Zinn

The quotes are often poignant or funny (one man before the firing squad requests a bulletproof vest) and often don't register as much more than interesting historical documents from centuries past. But read in aggregate, all that pain piles up. Essentially, Elder has amassed a collection of what people say when they know they are going to die, the final product of what could be seen as psychological torture. — Jonathan Messinger

Now in Utah if you get the death sentence, they have the firing squad. In Russia, they call that early retirement. — David Letterman

I have a counteroffer. I'll tell you the job description I really want."
Raine's throat tightened in frustration. If he was going to keep it on this level, it was up to her to force them to the next one. As always.
Seth looked down at his feet. She saw his Adam's apple bob, once. Twice. He met her eyes, with the look of a man who was facing the firing squad. "Full-time lover," he said hoarsely. "Father of your children. Companion in adventure, champion, guardian, protector, helpmeet, mate. Love of you life. Forever. — Shannon McKenna

flossing his teeth. He couldn't go to bed without flossing his teeth. For some reason, Sarah had found this irritating. If Macon were condemned to death, she'd said once, and they told him he'd be executed by firing squad at dawn, he would no doubt still insist on flossing the night before. Macon, after thinking it over, had agreed. — Anne Tyler

The reason the lawyers lead the line to the guillotine or the firing squad is that, while law is supposed to be a device to serve society, a civilized way of helping the wheels go round without too much friction, it is pretty hard to find a group less concerned with serving society and more concerned with serving themselves than the lawyers. — Fred Rodell

Behold those times re-created by
the brutal power of sunlit images,
the light of life's tragedy.
The walls of the trial, the field
of the firing squad; and the distant
ghost of Rome's suburbs in a ring,
gleaming white in naked light.
Gunshots: our death, our survival. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

There's a long history of resistance movements igniting in the soccer stadium. In the Red Star Revolution, Draza, Krle, and the other Belgrade soccer hooligans helped topple Slobodan Milosevic. Celebrations for Romania's 1990 WOrld Cup qualification carried over into the Bucharest squares, culminating in a firing squad that trained its rifles on the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. The movement that toppled the Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner had the same sportive ground zero. — Franklin Foer

You have [Donald] Trump and [Ted] Cruz battling it out, and the moderate establishment candidates like Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich - they have formed a circular firing squad. — Mara Liasson

Neena leaned over. "Now, which of your top five do you think would be the most eager baby maker? Should we put that on a checklist?"
Even my most violent glare did nothing to diminish her giddiness. "Don't forget, I can call in a firing squad at any moment if I like."
"You can call that firing squad whenever you want, but I've got Grandma on my side, so I've got nothing to worry about. — Kiera Cass

What do you see when you see me?' She asked him, burying her own face in his bosom.
'Do you want the truth?'
She nodded.
'The firing squad.'
'That's not the whole truth. Try again.'
'Insatiability,' he said with some bitterness.
'That's oblique but altogether too simple. Once more,' she insisted. 'One more time.'
He was silent for several minutes.
'The map of a country in which I only exist by virtue of the extravagance of my metaphors.'
'Now you're being too sophisticated. And, besides, what metaphors do we have in common? — Angela Carter

War brutalises a man. It is not surprising he was moody and violent. But you must remember two things: running away from battle has always been punishable by death. Military discipline must be harsh, or every soldier would run away; and secondly in a firing squad of ten men only one held a rifle with live ammunition - nine held blanks. So every man had a nine out of ten chance of not being responsible for the death of his colleague. — Jennifer Worth

Because Utah is largely Mormon country, the firing squad's a little different. You're blindfolded but no cigarette. — David Letterman

He paused. Perhaps he had a son. He intoned their names, and then he said, "I sentence you to death. The sentence shall be carried out by firing squad, at the customary time, in the execution yard of this prison, one week from today." Then Fabio asked, "Why a week?" as coolly and with as much detachment as a customer in a bank wanting to know why his funds had not cleared. The court president did not object to this unceremonious interruption, for the sentence was severe enough to cover any and all offenses, past, present, future, and imagined. His tone was friendly and somehow reassuring. "We need a little extra time for your friend Grigi." At this, the soldiers of the 19th River Guard, now condemned, began to laugh, and the gavel struck. — Mark Helprin

Richard's ex-girlfriends were long gone, but their voices followed him all the time and spoke to him, like Muses or Furies. It was like having seven superegos arranged in a firing squad before a single beleaguered id, making sure he didn't enjoy that last cigarette. — Neal Stephenson

Frankly, I don't think you should perform in a plaza where thousands of Cubans have been subjected to the death penalty, by firing squad, including three young black men in 2003. What is needed in Cuba is a concert in favor of democracy, civil liberties for the people, the freedom of political prisoners, free elections and the expulsion of dictatorial power. — Zoe Valdes

I think I stand as much chance of dying in front of a firing squad or in a gas chamber as you do being killed on a plane flight home. Let's hope you don't. — Ted Bundy