I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
No crime has been without a precedent.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
