Quotes

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

Justice renders to every one his due.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

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.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

A sick person is a prisoner.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

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.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

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

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.