Quotes

Man is condemned to be free.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

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.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

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.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

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