Quotes

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

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

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

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

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.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

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.

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.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

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.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

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

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