We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Man is condemned to be free.
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.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
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.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
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!
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.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
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?
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
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.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
