Quotes

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

He who profits by a crime commits it.

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

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

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.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

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

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 power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

No man should be judge in his own case.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

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

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

Vices are not crimes.

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

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

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

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.

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.