Quotes

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

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

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

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

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.

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

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

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.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

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.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

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

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.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

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.

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

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

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.