Quotes

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

It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

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

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

Clemency alone makes us equal to the gods.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

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

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

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

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.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

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

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

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.

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

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.

I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.

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