Quotes

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

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.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

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.

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

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

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.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

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

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.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

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.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

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

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.