Quotes

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

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

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.

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

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Justice renders to every one his due.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

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

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

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.

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

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.