Quotes

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

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.

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.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

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.

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

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.