Quotes

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

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

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

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

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

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

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

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

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.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

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

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.

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 more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.