Quotes

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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

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

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

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

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

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

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

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.

If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?

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.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

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

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.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

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

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.

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

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

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.