Quotes

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

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

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

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

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

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

Vices are not crimes.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

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.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

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.

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

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

No crime has been without a precedent.

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

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

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.

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.