Quotes

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

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.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

The severest justice may not always be the best policy.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.

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.

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.

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

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

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When Somebody Up There -- a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator -- so decrees.

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.

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.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

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.

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

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

No crime has been without a precedent.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.