Quotes

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

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.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.