A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Vices are not crimes.
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
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.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.
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.
