Quotes

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Man is condemned to be free.

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

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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

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.

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

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

Justice renders to every one his due.

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

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

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

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.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.