Quotes

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

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

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.

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

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

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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.

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.

If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!

No crime has been without a precedent.

No man survives when freedom fails. The best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

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 have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

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.

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

In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrist? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

If two people fight on the street, whose fault is it? Who is the criminal? It is the government’s responsibility because the government has not educated the people to not make mistakes. The people have inadequate, incompetent education, so they make mistakes! It is such a fraud.

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