Quotes

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

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!

The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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.

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.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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.”

And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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%.

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

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

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.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

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

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

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?