The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
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.
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.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
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.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
