Quotes

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

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

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

Vices are not crimes.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

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

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

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.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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.

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

We are prisoners of ideas.

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.

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

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

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

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

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

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.