Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

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

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

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

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

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

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

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

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.

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