Quotes

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

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

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

Vices are not crimes.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

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

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.