Quotes

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

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

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

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.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

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

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.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

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 only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

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

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

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.

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