Quotes

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

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

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.

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

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

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.”

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

The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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

One crime is everything; two nothing.

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

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

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

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

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.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

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

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.