Quotes

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

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

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

A sick person is a prisoner.

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

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

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

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.

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

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

We are prisoners of ideas.

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

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

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