Quotes

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

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

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

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

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.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

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

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

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.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

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

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.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.