Quotes

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

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

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.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

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

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

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

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

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

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

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

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

One crime has to be concealed by another.

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

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 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.

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.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

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