Quotes

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

We are prisoners of ideas.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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

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.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

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

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

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

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.

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.

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

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.