Quotes

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

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

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

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.

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.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

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

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.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

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

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.

I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

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

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.