Quotes

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

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

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

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

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.

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

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.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

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

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

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.

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

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

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.