Quotes

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

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

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

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

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

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

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

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

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

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

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?

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

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

Man is condemned to be free.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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.

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