While crime is punished it yet increases.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
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
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
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.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
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.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
