Quotes

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

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

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

Prison makes you a better judge of character. You pick up on people much faster.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

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

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

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.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

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.

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

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.

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

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.

Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.

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