Quotes

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

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

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

I have never been contained except I made the prison.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

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

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.