Quotes

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

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.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

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

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

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.

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.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

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.