Quotes

No crime has been without a precedent.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

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.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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!

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

We are prisoners of ideas.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.