Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
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.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
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.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
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.
