Quotes

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

The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

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

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

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

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.

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.

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

He who profits by a crime commits it.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

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

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.

Women have worked hard; starved in prison; given of their time and lives that we might sit in the House of Commons and take part in the legislating of this country.

If you share the crime of your friend, you make it your own.

They took away my money, my family, and my security. Why couldn't they destroy my ideas? We will question them in court tomorrow as we trigger The Revolution of all revolutions!

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.

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

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

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

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

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