Quotes

One crime is everything; two nothing.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

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

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

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

Justice renders to every one his due.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

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