The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
No man should be judge in his own case.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
Man is condemned to be free.
