Quotes

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

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

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

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.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

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.

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

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

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.

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

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.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.