When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.
In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.
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.
Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
