I used to think that a man was sentenced to death or imprisonment because he was guilty; now I know that he is found guilty because he is disliked.
No Man ought to be looked upon as guilty, before he has received his judicial Sentence; nor can the Laws deprive him of their Protection, before it is proved that he has forfeited all Right to it. What Right therefore can Power give to any to inflict Punishment upon a Citizen at a Time, when it is yet dubious, whether he is Innocent or guilty?
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Just as the liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe any one else; so a guilty society can more easily be persuaded that any apparently innocent act is guilty than that any apparently guilty act is innocent.
To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.
In the end, man is not entirely guilty — he did not start history. Nor is he wholly innocent — he continues it.
In England a man is presoomed to be innocent till he's proved guilty an' they take it f 'r granted he's guilty. In this counthry a man is presoomed to be guilty ontil he's proved guilty an' afther that he's presoomed to be innocent.
That charge [stealing over 200 horses] has never been proved against me, and it is held in English law that a man is innocent until proven guilty.
It is certain that every man has a right to keep his own sentiments, if he pleases: he has certainly a right to judge whether he will make them public, or commit them only to the sight of his own friends. In that state the manuscript is, in every sense his peculiar property; and no man can take it from him or make any use of it which he has not authorized, without being guilty of a violation of his property.
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.