Quotes

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

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

I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

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

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

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
~(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Steal goods and you’ll go to prison, steal lands and you are a king.

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

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.

The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

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

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

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.

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.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

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.

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.