As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
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.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
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.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
One crime has to be concealed by another.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
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.”
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.
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.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
