A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
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.
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.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.
Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
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.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
