Quotes

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

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

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

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

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

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.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

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

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

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

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.