50 Assassination Quotes About the Murder of An Important or Prominent Person

By Stephanie Kirby | Published June 19, 2023

Take a look at these assassination quotes about murders throughout history.

Dictionary.com defines assassination as “the premeditated act of killing someone suddenly or secretively, especially a prominent person.”

Some of the most famous assassinations throughout history are:

Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by his own senators.
Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth just days after leading the Union to victory in the Civil War.
Martin Luther King Jr., the most prominent voice in the Civil Rights movement, was assassinated while he spoke from a motel balcony.
James Garfield, the 20th President of the United States, was shot in the back by Charles Guiteau, a political hopeful.
John F. Kennedy, the popular President, was shot and killed while driving in a motorcade. A motive was never proven.

Those are just a few of the famous assassinations in history, but to learn more about assassinations, read these assassination quotes.

Top Assassination Quotes

Here are some of the top quotes online about assassinations.

1. “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.” — George Bernard Shaw

2. “Assassination is the assassination of hope.” — Bernard Malamud

3. “Fear is an assassin; if you leet it in your life, it will kill your dreams.” – Matshona Dhliwaygo

4. “Assassination has never changed the history of the world.” — Benjamin Disraeli

5. “Assassination is the tool of the weak and the cowardly.” — Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

6. “The assassination of Lincoln was an attack not only on a man but on the principles and ideals he stood for.” — Jay Winik

7. “An assassination is not simply a violent crime. It is a political and psychological act with profound historical consequences.” — Richard N. Current

8. “The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.” — Eric Ambler

9. “The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” — Robert M. Hutchins

10. “Those who want the government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.” — Harry S Truman

Lincoln Assassination Quotes

These quotes share more about the impact of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

11. “Now he belongs to the ages.” — Edwin M. Stanton

12. “When I am gone, you need to tell my story. You need to let the world know what happened here.” — Abraham Lincoln

13. “The most important consequence of Lincoln’s assassination was that it made him a martyr to freedom.” — Albert Eric Foner

14. “With the Lincoln assassination, the South didn’t feel it could mourn along with the North.” — Candice Millard

15. “No other national leader has been assassinated in such a mood of political disillusionment.” — Richard N. Current

16. “One of the darkest moments in our nation’s history was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.” — George W. Bush

17. “The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.” — Abraham Lincoln

18. “The tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination was not only the loss of a great man but also the loss of the chance for a fuller peace after the Civil War.” — Mark E. Neely Jr.

19. “The bullet that pierced President Lincoln’s brain ended the life of one of the greatest men this nation has ever produced.” — Frederick Douglass

20. “My memories were written, and a portion of them already in the hands of the publishers, when the startline news came which has thrilled all Europe and filled her inhabitants with horror—the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.” — Belle Boyd

War and Assassination Quotes

Learn more about what people think of assassination and war.

21. “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” — Isaac Asimov

22. “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” — Vladimir Lenin

23. “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” — Bertrand Russell

24. “Assassination is the short-term offspring of anger.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley

25. “Assassination is the art of turning politics into acts of violence.” — Terry Pratchett

26. “Assassination is the murder of an individual with a purpose.” — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

27. “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” — General George S. Patton

28. “Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.” — Adolf Hitler

29. “An assassination is not simply a violent crime. It is a political and psychological act with profound historical consequences.” — Richard N. Current

30. “People say you favor assassination; what do you think war is? Except that it’s assassination on a much larger scale, a much more horrific scale.” — John Bolton

JFK Assassination Quotes

Learn more about the Kennedy assassination and people’s beliefs about it.

31. “We have not been told the truth about Oswald.” — Richard Russell

32. “Fifty years and people are still talking about who did it.” — Elizabeth Horton-Newton

33. “Jackie Kennedy was magnificent in the days and weeks immediately following her husband’s assassination.” — Pierre Salinger

34. “The Kennedy assassination is one of the ghostliest parts of our history. The Kennedy Family—that’s our royalty.” — Richard Belzer

35. “I’ll tell you something about Kennedy’s murder that will rock you…..Kennedy was trying to get Castro, but Castro got to him first.” — Lyndon Johnson

36. “Then I heard what I thought was a motorcycle backfiring, only it wasn’t – it was the first shot and then in a few seconds, another shot and a third.” — Dr. Ronald Jones

37. “I told the FBI what I had heard [two shots from behind the grassy knoll fence], but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to.” — Ken O’Donnell

38. “So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy’s assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.” — Marian Wright Edelman

39. “Nearly all Americans felt they knew JFK intimately, his charm and wit regularly lighting up the television screen at home. This is why polls showed that millions of Americans took his assassination like a ‘death in the family.’” — Vincent Bugliosi

40. “To those who don’t want the truth about Kennedy’s assassination to become known, the very repetition of a charge lends it a certain credibility since people have a tendency to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” — Jim Garrison

Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Quotes

These quotes show Martin Luther King, Jr’s impact on the country and the world while he was on this earth.

41. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

42. “I think that the implication of King’s assassination has not been fully appreciated.” — Henry Louis Gates

43. “The bullet that took Martin Luther King Jr.’s life cannot kill his dream of a just and equal society.” — Andrew Young

44. “The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. made me very, very sad, and I mourned, and I cried like many of our citizens did.” — John Lewis

45. “We can’t answer King’s assassination with violence. That would be the worst tribute we could pay him.” — Sammy Davis, Jr.

46. “Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination was a painful reminder of the deep-rooted racism and hatred that still plagued our society.” — Coretta Scott King

47. “The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was a painful blow, but his message of love, peace, and equality remains a powerful force for change.” — Desmond Tutu

48. “While Martin Luther King Jr. may have been silenced by an assassin’s bullet, his voice and vision continue to resonate and inspire generations.” — Nelson Mandela

49. “Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination was a great tragedy that shook the conscience of our nation and sparked a renewed commitment to the civil rights movement.” — John Lewis

50. “Yes, I think it’s really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalition relationship with the trade union movement.” — Angela Davis