Quotes

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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.

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.

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.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

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.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

No man should be judge in his own case.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

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.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.