Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
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.
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.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits 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.
When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
A sick person is a prisoner.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
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.
