Quotes

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

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

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.

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

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

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 most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

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.

No crime has been without a precedent.

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.