If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
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.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
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?
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.
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.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.
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.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
