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.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
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.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
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 common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
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.
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.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.
