Quotes

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

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

Man is condemned to be free.

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

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

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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

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

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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.

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

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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

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

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.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

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

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.