Quotes

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

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

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.

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

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

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

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

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

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

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

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.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Man is condemned to be free.