In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
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.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You're an animal in a cage and you're treated like one.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
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 perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
