Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
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?
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
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.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.
Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.
