Quotes

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

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

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

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

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

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

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

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

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.

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

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

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

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.

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

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

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

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.

The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

A sick person is a prisoner.

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.

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.