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.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

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

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 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.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

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

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

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

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

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world; Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.

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.

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