The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
No crime has been without a precedent.
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.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
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.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
