Quotes

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

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

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 just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.

What is crime amongst the multitude, is only vice among the few.

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.

History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

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!

Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a 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.

The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

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

Man is condemned to be free.

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.

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

The solution to our drug problem is not in incarceration.

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

A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.

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.