Quotes

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

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.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

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.

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

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.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

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

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.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

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

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

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.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

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

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

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