Quotes

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

Man is condemned to be free.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

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.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

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.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

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.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

Vices are not crimes.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.