Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
Vices are not crimes.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
