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.
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.
Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.
The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
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.
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.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.
So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
