Quotes

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

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

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

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.

Justice renders to every one his due.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

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

No man should be judge in his own case.

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.