Quotes

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.

Society has used the juvenile courts to create a caste system where there are throw-away people.

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

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

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.

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.

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

You stuff somebody into the American dream, and it becomes a prison.

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.

Man is condemned to be free.

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work, or prison.

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

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.

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

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

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!

Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.

If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

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.

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

Justice renders to every one his due.

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.