Quotes

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

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

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

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

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

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

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

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

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

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

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

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 penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.