Quotes

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

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

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

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

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

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

Vices are not crimes.

Man is condemned to be free.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.

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.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

Justice renders to every one his due.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

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

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

To try to raise a son from inside the prison walls is a very difficult thing. But I want to say to the world my son at 16 was the one who tried the most to get me out of prison.
~Jim Bakker