Quotes

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.

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

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

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

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

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

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

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

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

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

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.