Quotes

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

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.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

Man is condemned to be free.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.