Quotes

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

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

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.

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

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

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

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

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

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

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

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

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.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.