Quotes

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.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

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

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

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

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.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

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

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

He who profits by a crime commits it.