It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
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.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
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.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
