The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
Pardon is the virtue of victory.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
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.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
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.
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 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.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.
