Quotes

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.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

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

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

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

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

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

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

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

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.