Quotes

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

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

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

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

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

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

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

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

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.

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.

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

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.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

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.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

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

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

I have never been contained except I made the prison.