Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.
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.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
If you treat prisoners well, they will be less angry, less inclined to violence inside prison, less likely to provoke violent actions by guards, less likely to have reason to file brutality lawsuits that cost taxpayers a bundle and waste administrators' time. And most important, well-treated prisoners will be less likely to leave prison angrier, more vicious and more inclined to criminal behavior than when they went in.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
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.
