Quotes

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

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.

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.

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

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

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

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.

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

We are prisoners of ideas.

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

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

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.

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

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

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

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

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.