Quotes

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or 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.

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

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

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

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

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

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

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

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

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

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.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

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

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

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.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.