Quotes

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

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

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.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

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.

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

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

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

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

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.”

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

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

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.

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

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.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

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

If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.