Quotes

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.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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 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.

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

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

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

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.

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.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

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.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

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.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

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

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

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

He who profits by a crime commits it.

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

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

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

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?