Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
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.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
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.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
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.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
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.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
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.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
