When you are younger you get blamed for
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
No crime has been without a precedent.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner
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.”
In prisons, those things withheld from
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
A country is in a bad state, which is
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.
Adversities such as being homeless and
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
There are dreadful punishments enacted
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch;
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
I submit that an individual who breaks a
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.
One crime has to be concealed by
One crime has to be concealed by another.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
I don't like being famous - it is like a
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
It was only when I lay there on the
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
You stuff somebody into the American
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
It is the deed that teaches, not the
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.
Corporal punishment falls far more
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
In my country we go to prison first and
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
