Quotes

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

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.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

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.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

Crimes generally punish themselves.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

Governments have tried to stop crime through punishment throughout the ages, but crime continued in the past punishment remains. Crime can only be stopped through a preventive approach in the schools. You teach the students Transcendental Meditation, and right away they’ll begin using their full brain physiology sensible and they will not get sidetracked into wrong things.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

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.”

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

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

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.