Quotes

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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

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

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

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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

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.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

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

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.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

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

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

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

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