Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
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.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Man is condemned to be free.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
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.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
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.
