What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
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.
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.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
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?
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
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.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
