Quotes

No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive.

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

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.

Punishment, that is the justice for the unjust.

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.

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.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

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

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%.

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.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

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.

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

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.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

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

We are prisoners of ideas.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

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

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.

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!

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