Quotes

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

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.”

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

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.

Man is condemned to be free.