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?
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
Man is condemned to be free.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
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.
Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.
The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
While crime is punished it yet increases.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
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.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
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.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
