Quotes

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

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

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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

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

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?

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

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

Vices are not crimes.

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

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

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

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

We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

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

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

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

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.