Quotes

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

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.

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

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

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

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

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

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.

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

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

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

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

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.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.

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

Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.