Any punishment that does not correct,
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
How dreadful it is when the right judge
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
We are prisoners of ideas.
We are prisoners of ideas.
What restrains us from killing is partly
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
I existed in a world that never is - the
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
It is the spirit and not the form of law
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
One of the problems that the marijuana
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.
Corporal punishment falls far more
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
One man meets an infamous punishment for
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
We have our own system, ... and
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
I asked a man in prison once how he
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us,
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
Law is merely the expression of the will
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
Society prepares the crime; the criminal
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Organized crime in America takes in over
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.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
He who opens a school door, closes a
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
Experts and the educated elite have
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
