Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
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.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
No crime has been without a precedent.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
