Quotes

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.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

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

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

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

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

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

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

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%.

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

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.

Man is condemned to be free.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

Vices are not crimes.

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

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.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

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

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.