It is safer that a bad man should not be
It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.
The severest justice may not always be
The severest justice may not always be the best policy.
One of the many lessons that one learns
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
In my country we go to prison first and
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
One of the problems that the marijuana
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
It isn't true that convicts live like
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
I wrote a million words in the first
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
We judge ourselves by what we feel
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
I can work for the Lord in or out of
I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
While crime is punished it yet
While crime is punished it yet increases.
Organized crime in America takes in over
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
I existed in a world that never is - the
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Before we can diminish our sufferings
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.
To make punishments efficacious, two
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
Society prepares the crime; the criminal
Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
No obligation to justice does force a
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
Intellectual despair results in neither
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.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
He who opens a school door, closes a
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
It was only when I lay there on the
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
If we were brought to trial for the
If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.
It is better that ten guilty persons
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
