Quotes

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

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

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

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

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

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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.

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