Quotes

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

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

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.

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.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

Adversities such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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.

It is safer that a bad man should not be accused, than that he should be acquitted.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.

No man should be judge in his own case.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

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

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

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

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.

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

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

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

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.

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