Quotes

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.

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.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

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 thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

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

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

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

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.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

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