Quotes

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.

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

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

While crime is punished it yet increases.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man.

He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Man is condemned to be free.

The best situation of all, and one frequently utilized, is for jails and prisons to allow volunteer ministers of all faiths to enter prisons and offer their services to the inmates who want them. That way, the religious needs of inmates are met but without government funds being spent.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

One crime is everything; two nothing.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking…is freedom.

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

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

No crime has been without a precedent.

Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.

Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.

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.

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.

There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.