Quotes

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

Justice renders to every one his due.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits 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.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

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.

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

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

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

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

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

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

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

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.