Quotes

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

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.

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.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

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.

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

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.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

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

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!

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.

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

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

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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.

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

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

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

No crime has been without a precedent.