He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
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.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.
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.
It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.
