Quotes

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

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.”

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

Justice renders to every one his due.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

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

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

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