Quotes

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

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

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

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.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

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

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

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

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

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.

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.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

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.

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.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

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.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.