Quotes

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.

Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.

Hard cases, it is said, make bad law.

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

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.

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.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

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

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

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

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.

Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

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.

So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

No written law has been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

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

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

Shyness is the prison of the heart.

Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.

There's no greater threat to our independence, to our cherished freedoms and personal liberties than the continual, relentless injection of these insidious poisons into our system. We must decide whether we cherish independence from drugs, without which there is no freedom.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.