In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.
How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.
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.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
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.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
