Quotes

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

The uneven impact of actual enforcement measures tends to mirror and reinforce more general patterns of discrimination (along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic, sexual, and perhaps generational lines) within the society. As a consequence, such enforcement (ineffective as it may be in producing conformity) almost certainly reinforces feelings of alienation already prevalent within major segments of the population.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

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.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

Justice renders to every one his due.

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

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

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.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

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

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

We are prisoners of ideas.

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

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

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.