No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
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.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
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.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
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!
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
