Quotes

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

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

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

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

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

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.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

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

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.

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

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

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.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

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

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.