Prison Quotes

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

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

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

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

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

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.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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

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

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.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.