Quotes

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

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.

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

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

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

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

No crime has been without a precedent.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

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

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

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

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

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.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

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.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.