The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.
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.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
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.
