No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
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.
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.
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.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Man is condemned to be free.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.
