Quotes

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

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

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

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

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

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

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

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

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

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

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

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

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.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.