Quotes

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

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

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

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

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.

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

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

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

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.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

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.”

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

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.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

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.

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.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

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