Quotes

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

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

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

Justice renders to every one his due.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

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

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.

He who profits by a crime commits it.

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

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

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.