Quotes

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

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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

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

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

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.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

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.

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.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

No man should be judge in his own case.

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.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

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.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.