Quotes

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

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.

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

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

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

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

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

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.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

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.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

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 know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.