To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.
~James Bell
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
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.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
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?
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.
