Quotes

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

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.

Vices are not crimes.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

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

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

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

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

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

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

A sick person is a prisoner.

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

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

Man is condemned to be free.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.