Quotes

Prison, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible because they are the crossroads of all the evil in the world. One cannot commit evil in hell.

Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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.

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

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

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.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

Man is condemned to be free.

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

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

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

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

A sick person is a prisoner.

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.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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

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

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.