Quotes

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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 public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

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.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

A sick person is a prisoner.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

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?

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

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