Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
A sick person is a prisoner.
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.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
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.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
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.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
