Quotes

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

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

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

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

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

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

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

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.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

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

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

A sick person is a prisoner.

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 know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

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

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

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.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.