I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
Man is condemned to be free.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
No crime has been without a precedent.
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.
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.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
