Quotes

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.

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.

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.

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.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

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.

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.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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.

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

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Justice renders to every one his due.

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

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

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.