Quotes

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

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

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

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

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

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.

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

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

Man is condemned to be free.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.