Quotes

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.

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

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

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

It becomes not a law-maker to be a law-breaker.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

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

Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us.

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.

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

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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.

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

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

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 solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.